Collection Conversations: Cruz Ortiz and the Modern Portrait

Cruz Ortiz is on view at the McNay Art Museum in the Zoch Gallery, where his portraits are paired with some of the museum's own most treasured modern portraits. The exhibition, Collection Conversations: Cruz Ortiz and the Modern Portrait, runs from August 19, 2026, through March 14, 2027, and it's organized to encourage visitors to reconsider portraiture and how it's evolved over time.

Ortiz is a San Antonio artist, born in 1972, and he first came to easel painting as a form of documentation rooted in art history. His work draws on nineteenth-century French modernism, punk rock aesthetics, and the Chicano experience in Texas. He's recalled museum visits to works by Rivera, Alice Neel, and Pablo Picasso, and that sense of looking back is woven into how he works today. He describes himself as an interdisciplinary artist, though painted portraits have become his primary focus: they let him tell present-day stories through a medium that connects him to the past.

By placing Ortiz's paintings alongside the McNay's permanent collection, the show puts his work in direct conversation with the portraits that came before it. It's a good way to see where his influences sit and how he's continuing a long tradition in his own way. You can find the exhibition in the Zoch Gallery at the McNay in San Antonio, open through March 14, 2027.