Portraiture to peruse out West

“Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long,” photographer Walker Evans once wrote. Portraits and their ability to tell family stories provide the springboard for three museum exhibits in the West. Some look to the future, some reflect on the past, but all are worthy of a stare.

Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History

“Lost Childhoods: Voices of Santa Cruz County Foster Youth and the Foster Youth Museum” showcases the loss and lives that the state’s 60,000 foster kids face as they battle homelessness. Portraits by Ray Bussolari show some with all of their belongings, seemingly packed up and ready to go. Info, cost: Through Dec. 31; $10 admission. Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz; (831) 429-1964, santacruzmah.org

SFMOMA

Walker Evans gives us plenty to stare at in his portraits of rural families in the South taken in the 1930s. The photos are part of a major retrospective of his work from the 1920s to the 1970s on now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In the 300-plus prints, you see a mix of dayto-day life and portraits of individuals who agreed to share their story. But it’s the Depression-era photos that hit hardest. Info, cost: Through Feb. 4; $25 per person. SFMOMA, 151 3rd St., San Francisco; (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org

Portland Art Museum

“Representing: Vernacular Photographs of, by and for African Americans” brings together portraits from a family album, snapshots and Polaroids from the late 1800s through the 1990s. “Throughout the history of photography, the representation of African Americans has been problematic and, until recently, understudied,” the museum’s website says of the show, which provides a counterpoint to racial stereotypes of the times. The album of a Tuskegee Airman and his wife, the first black woman to be admitted to the Oregon bar, joins other images to show what life for blacks in Portland, Ore., looked like in the last two centuries. Info, cost: Through Dec. 3; $19.99 admission. Portland Art Museum, 1219 S.W. Park Ave., Portland; (503) 226-2811, portlandartmuseum.org