Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Announces Upcoming Exhibitions Winter through Fall 2024

Installation view, Isaac Julien, Lessons of the Hour, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, September 24 – December 15, 2019. © Isaac Julien, Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro. Image Courtesy of SCAD

Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass
Dec. 6, 2023  – 2026

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum have jointly purchased the tour de force “Lessons of the Hour” (2019) by artist and filmmaker Sir Isaac Julien. The moving image installation interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of 19th-century activist, writer, orator and philosopher Frederick Douglass (1818–1895). Through critical research, fictional reconstruction and a marriage of poetic image and sound, Julien foregrounds Douglass’s enduring lessons of justice, abolition and freedom.

This is the first joint acquisition by the two Smithsonian museums, which share a historic building in downtown Washington, D.C., and is the first work by Julien to enter each of the museums’ collections. “Lessons of the Hour” features passages from Douglass’ key speeches, including the titular “Lessons of the Hour” as well as “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and “Lecture on Pictures.” The 28-minute work will make its Washington debut on Friday, Dec. 8, and will remain on public view through the United States Semiquincentennial in 2026. This one-room presentation, titled “Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour—Frederick Douglass,” is organized by Saisha Grayson, curator of time-based media at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Charlotte Ickes, curator of time-based media art and special projects at the National Portrait Gallery.
 

Clark Gable and Joan Crawford by George Hurrell, gelatin Silver Print, 1936. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired in part through the generosity of an anonymous donor

Star Power: Photographs from Hollywood’s Golden Age by George Hurrell
March 1, 2024 – Jan. 5, 2025

Widely regarded as the preeminent Hollywood portrait photographer of the 1930s and 1940s, George Hurrell (1904–1992) created definitive, timeless images of many of the most- glamorous figures of filmdom’s golden age. Hurrell began his Hollywood career in 1930 as a photographer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio that claimed to have “more stars than there are in heaven.” With a keen eye for lighting effects and artful posing, he developed a style of presentation that magnified the stars and influenced popular standards of glamour. Advancing rapidly to become MGM’s in-house portraitist, Hurrell produced memorable images of film royalty, ranging from Joan Crawford and Clark Gable to Spencer Tracy and Greta Garbo. He established his own studio on Sunset Boulevard in 1933, where he continued to photograph actors for MGM as well as those under contract with other major studios. After closing his studio in 1938, Hurrell concluded the decade as the head of photography for Warner Bros.

Selected from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection by Senior Curator of Photographs Ann Shumard, this exhibition features golden-age portraits that reveal Hurrell’s skill in shaping the images of some of Hollywood’s brightest stars.
 

Josephine Baker by Stanislaus Waléry, gelatin silver print, 1926. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900 – 1939
April 26, 2024 – Feb. 23, 2025

 “Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900 – 1939” illuminates the accomplishments of sixty unconventional women who pursued their personal and professional aspirations in Paris. As foreigners in a cosmopolitan center of culture, these “exiles” escaped the constraints that limited them at home. Many used their newfound freedom to pursue transformative experiments in a variety of fields, including art, literature, design, publishing, music, fashion, journalism, theater and dance. An impressive number became prominent cultural arbiters, not merely participating in important modernist initiatives but orchestrating them. The progressive ventures they undertook while living abroad profoundly influenced American culture and opened new possibilities for women. “Brilliant Exiles” highlights the dynamic role of portraiture in articulating the new identities that American women were at liberty to develop in Paris.

“Brilliant Exiles” is the first exhibition to focus on the impact of American women on Paris – and of Paris on American women – from the turn of the 20th century until the outbreak of World War II. Included will be portraits of cultural influencers, such as Josephine Baker, Isadora Duncan, Zelda Fitzgerald, Loïs Mailou Jones, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Anaïs Nin, Gertrude Stein, Ethel Waters and Anna May Wong. The exhibition is curated by Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings, and will be accompanied by a major catalogue, published by the National Portrait Gallery and Yale University Press.
 

James Baldwin by Beauford Delaney, pastel on paper, 1963. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © Estate of Beauford Delaney by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York

This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance
June 21, 2024 – April 20, 2025

“This Morning, This Evening, So Soon: James Baldwin and the Voices of Queer Resistance” is curated by Rhea L. Combs, director of curatorial affairs for the National Portrait Gallery, with concept and text from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als. It is titled after a short story the writer, essayist, playwright and activist published in The Atlantic. Commemorating the centennial of Baldwin’s birth, the exhibition will be on view the museum’s One Life gallery.

Baldwin, who considered himself “a witness, about literature, about his works, about America and about history,” often spoke out against injustice. At a time when he and his queer contemporaries had to keep their sexuality at least partly hidden, they could fight openly for civil rights. Baldwin’s efforts to ensure the United States “kept the faith” often drew recognition, overshadowing those of other like-minded collaborators, such as Bayard Rustin and Lorraine Hansberry.  A celebration of their various queer voices, this collective portrait of sorts offers an admiring corrective.

The exhibition will rely on portraiture and ephemera to explore the interwoven lives of Baldwin; Lorraine Hansberry, author of “A Raisin in the Sun”; lawyer, educator and politician Barbara Jordan; activist Bayard Rustin; and Essex Hemphill and Marlon Riggs, both poets and filmmakers. Well-known portraits by Beauford Delany and Bernard Gotfryd will be shown alongside works by artists such as Richard Avedon, Glenn Ligon, Donald Moffett, Faith Ringgold, Lorna Simpson and Jack Whitten. Viewing Baldwin in the context of his community will reveal how his sexuality, faith, artistic curiosities and notions of masculinity—coupled with his involvement in the civil rights movement—helped define his writing and long-lasting legacy.
 

Abraham Lincoln by George Clark, ambrotype campaign pin, 1860. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Picturing the Presidents: Daguerreotypes and Ambrotypes from the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection

May 31, 2024 – June 8, 2025

To mark the presidential election of 2024, this exhibition presents daguerreotype and ambrotype portraits of eight men – from John Quincy Adams to Chester Arthur – who held the nation’s highest office during the nineteenth century. A highlight is the rare ambrotype pin from Abraham Lincoln’s first presidential campaign. Featuring a likeness of Lincoln by Mathew Brady, it is credited with contributing to Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 election. The exhibition also includes daguerreotypes of paintings portraying George Washington and Andrew Jackson, whose terms of office predated photography. As a coda to these representations of the nation’s early presidents, the exhibition features a modern daguerreotype documenting the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.
 

Feliz Gonzalez-Torres, “‘Untitled’ (Portrait of Dad),” white mint candies in clear wrappers, endless supply, 1991.

Overall dimensions vary with installation. Ideal weight: 175 lb.

Installation view, Material Tells, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Jun. 23 – Sep. 8, 2019. Photo by Laura Findlay; Cur. Daisy Desrosiers. © Estate Felix Gonzalez-Torres, courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation

Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return

Oct. 18, 2024 – June 22, 2025

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and the Archives of American Art will present “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return,” an exhibition focused on the artist’s deep engagement with portraiture and the construction of identity, as well as how history is told and inherited. As one of the leading artists—and portraitists—of the twentieth century, Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) expanded the horizon of what a portrait could be, from a genre often seen as a static representation of individuals to one with the capacity to change, remain resonant, and encourage collaboration. With no formal beginning or end point, the exhibition will unfold at the intersection of Gonzalez-Torres’s groundbreaking work, the context of two Smithsonian collections, and the historically significant setting of Washington, D.C.

The exhibition is planned to continue outside the building with the placement of the artist’s light string work “Untitled” (America) (1994) in three key locations: the facade of the museum, the first floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library of the District of Columbia Public Library, and outdoors along 8th Street between D and E Streets NW in partnership with the DowntownDC BID.

“Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return” will be the first major presentation of the artist’s work in Washington, D.C., in more than 30 years. The exhibition is co-curated by Josh T Franco, head of collecting, Archives of American Art, and Charlotte Ickes, curator of time-based media art and special projects, National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition will be on view from Oct. 18, 2024, through June 22, 2025, in the galleries at the National Portrait Gallery and Archives of American Art and will be accompanied by two publications.