Whistler’s Unconventional Beauty

The 19th-century American artist James McNeill Whistler made about 30 works inspired by Joanna Hiffernan, his model, muse and lover. But “The Woman in White,” a new exhibition opening at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., on July 3, is as much about the relationship between them as the art it produced. “To what extent did the model actually collaborate and participate in the work of art versus being a passive person just sitting there?” asks co-curator Ann Dumas of London’s Royal Academy of Arts.