Make thousands of new acquaintances! Featuring scientists, statesmen, and film stars, glimpsed through rare nineteenth-century daguerreotypes or year-old digital video, the National Portrait Gallery collections bring you face to face with America.

The nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, this exhibition lies at the heart of the Portrait Gallery’s mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it.

NPG Mezzanine: 20th and 21st Century Americans 52; NPG, South Gallery 240 30; 20th Century Americans: 1930-1960 26; NPG, South Gallery 321 26; NPG, West Gallery 210 26; 20th Century Americans: 1900-1930 (re-installation 2012) 25; 20th Century Americans: 1960-2000 25;

Opens September 19, 2025 The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present Amy Sherald: American Sublime, the largest, most comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s work to date.Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), “American Sublime” is the artist’s first major museum survey, bringing together paintings made from 2007 to the present.

The nation's only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, this exhibition lies at the heart of the Portrait Gallery's mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it.

Dec 13, 2023 · Oprah Winfrey’s portrait is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Chicago-based artist Shawn Michael Warren painted Winfrey in a purple taffeta dress amidst a lush garden at her California home.

Jun 18, 2021 · The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will extend “The Obama Portraits Tour” through October. The original five-city tour featuring the portraits of former President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively, will incorporate two additional cities with presentations at the de Young Museum in San Francisco (June 18–Aug. 14) and the ...

Experience portraiture beyond the frame. Our collections present people of remarkable character and achievement. These Americans—artists, politicians, scientists, inventors, activists, and performers—form our national identity.

Images:Ernest Hemingway in ambulance driver's uniform/ Ernest Hemingway Collection, JFK Library Ernest Hemingway as "Kid Balzac" / Waldo Peirce /Ernest Hemingway Collection, JFK Library Hemingway's first novel, The Sun Also Rises (back cover) / Image courtesy Archibald S. Alexander '28 Collection of Hemingway, Rare Books Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton ...

Benjamin Franklin, 1706–1790 | Born Boston, Massachusetts | Joseph Siffred Duplessis (1725–1802) | Oil on canvas, c. 1785 | Gift of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American in the world in his day. He was renowned for his scientific accomplishments as much as for his political and diplomatic triumphs.