National Portrait Gallery Announces Upcoming Exhibitions Fall through Winter 2025

Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism
Oct. 20, 2023 – Sept. 2, 2024

“Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism” presents some of the key people—scientists, politicians, activists, writers and artists—whose work has influenced attitudes toward the environment in the United States from the late 19th century until today. The exhibition traces a history of the movement from turn-of-the-20th-century conservationism to mid-20th-century environmentalism and its backlash. It also addresses present-day action on environmental justice, biodiversity and climate. Drawing mainly from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, “Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism” features more than 25 portraits of people who have made an enduring impact on public perceptions of the natural world, including the well-known figures Rachel Carson, George Washington Carver, Maya Lin, Henry David Thoreau and Edward O. Wilson. The exhibition will bring together portraiture, visual biography and the sitters’ own words to probe this important—and complicated—history. “Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism” is guest curated by Lacey Baradel, former science historian at the National Science Foundation, and will be on view from Oct. 20, 2023, through Sept. 2, 2024.

Recent Acquisitions
Nov. 3, 2023 – Oct. 27, 2024

“Recent Acquisitions” showcases 21 additions to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. The latest iteration of this annual display focuses exclusively on portraits representing women or made by women. Subjects include singer Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, artists Ruth Asawa, Shigeko Kubota, Nellie Mae Rowe and Betye Saar, philanthropist and social activist Madam C. J. Walker, Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writer Octavia Butler, astronomer Vera Rubin, photographer Ming Smith, actress and dancer Carmen de Lavallade, and actress Greta Garbo. This exhibition also presents the portraits of Professor Walter Alvarez by Carmen Lomas Garza and Rabbi Sally Priesand by Joan Roth, which were recently commissioned by the Portrait Gallery. “Recent Acquisitions” is curated by Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings; Taína Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture and Latino art and history; Rhea Combs, director of curatorial affairs; Charlotte Ickes, curator of time-based media and special projects and Ann Shumard, senior curator of photographs. 

Star Power: Photographs from Hollywood’s Golden Era 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 era. Hurrell began his Hollywood career in 1930 as a photographer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio (founded in 1924) 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, he produced memorable images of film royalty, from Greta and Clark Gable to Spencer Tracy and Joan Crawford. 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-era portraits that reveal Hurrell’s skill in shaping the images of Hollywood’s brightest stars.

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

Through portraiture and biography, “Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900 – 1939” illuminates the accomplishments of sixty convention-defying women who crossed the Atlantic to pursue personal and professional aspirations in the vibrant cultural milieu of Paris. As foreigners in a cosmopolitan city, these “exiles” escaped the constraints that limited them at home. Many used their newfound freedom to pursue culture-shifting experiments in a variety of fields, including art, literature, design, publishing, music, fashion, journalism, theater and dance. An impressive number rose to preeminence as 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 up 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.

Additional Summer and Fall Exhibitions

I Dream a World: Selections from Brian Lanker’s Portraits of Remarkable Black Women (Part II)
On view through Sept. 10, 2023

Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees
On view through Oct. 22, 2023

Kinship
On view through Jan. 7, 2024

1898: U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions
On view through Feb. 25, 2024

One Life: Frederick Douglass
On view through April 21, 2024

Duty, Honor, Country: Antebellum Portraits of West Pointers
June 23, 2023 – June 9, 2024

Powerful Partnerships: Civil War-Era Couples
On view through May 18, 2025

Out of Many: Portraits from 1600 to 1900
Ongoing

Abraham Lincoln by W. F. K. Travers
On view through Dec. 31, 2027