Always to Return examines Félix González-Torres's oeuvre in relation to portraiture and accompanies a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art.

This project is an experiment in what happens when the artist’s work and the Smithsonian’s collections meet. The specific, yet open-ended nature of González-Torres’s work—his life as a queer, Cuban-born immigrant who lived in Madrid, Puerto Rico, New York, and Miami—encourage new ways of thinking about portraiture, historiography, and the construction of identity. His practice probes the very existence of binaries such as past and present, public and private, major and minor, collective and individual. 

This model of interconnection inspired curatorial decisions to pair portraits from the museum’s collection with artwork by González-Torres. Building upon these themes, Always to Return offers new ways to observe the artist’s work, contextualizing his renowned practice within broader art histories.

The artist's work can be found in notable collections worldwide, including but not limited to: MOCA Los Angeles, the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum, MoMA (NYC), Whitney Museum (NYC), SFMOMA, MCA Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, Glenstone Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum, Tate London, ICA Miami, Crystal Bridges Museum, Buffalo AKG Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum, Harvard Art Museums, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, Cincinnati Museum of Art, and Baltimore Museum or Art,.