There is an art exhibition in Baltimore that spans two museums.

At the Contemporary Museum, the show is Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures, a collection of color photo portraits. Dawoud Bey took “The Class Pictures” of students in public and private high school students in cities across the country. They’re real portraits though, with personality. These are not the cheesy backdrop photos we all lined up to have taken in high school. The portraits depict students from all over the country, and from many walks of life. In sum, these portraits of individuals offer a portrait of their world.

At the Walters Museum, the other part of the show is called Portraits Re/Examined. This show was curated, in part, by high school students. They worked with artist Dawoud Bey to select portraits from the Walters collection to show alongside 10 of Bey’s similarly evocative portraits. The students were asked to address the question of race and class in portraiture. Some striking comparisons have developed between the older historic drawings, paintings, and portrait miniatures from the Walters’ collection and the contemporary photographs of ordinary people.

The student-curators also will create auxiliary components for the exhibition, including a blog, Facebook page, podcast series, and cell phone audio tour.

Both exhibitions run from December 13, 2008 until February 16, 2009.