Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Announces Its Advance Exhibition Schedule for the U.S. Semiquincentennial Fall 2025 – Summer 2026
NOTE TO EDITORS: Exhibition dates are subject to change. Please confirm details prior to publishing. Additional exhibitions and special programs to be announced.
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery announces its advance exhibition schedule to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. As a museum founded by an Act of Congress in 1962, the Portrait Gallery’s mission is to collect the portraits of individuals who have significantly impacted American history and culture. Since opening its doors to the public in 1968, the collection has grown from 285 portraits to more than 26,000 objects. Today, the Portrait Gallery draws more than 1 million visitors per year to its wide-ranging exhibitions and public programs.
To celebrate the nation’s semiquincentennial, the Portrait Gallery will present two major exhibitions by leading contemporary artists (“Amy Sherald: American Sublime” and “Wendy Red Star: Whispering Spirit”); a juried selection of contemporary portraits from the museum’s national Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition (“The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today”); and “Photographic Memory: Fifty Years of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery,” which will include highlights from the museum’s collection. In the latter exhibition, visitors will be able to see national photographic treasures, including a quarter-plate daguerreotype of Dolley Madison (c. 1846) by John Plumbe Jr., which is the earliest known photograph of a U.S. First Lady, and Alexander Gardner’s “cracked-plate” photograph of President Abraham Lincoln that was made shortly before his assassination in 1865.
Throughout the semiquincentennial, audiences will also be invited to explore the museum’s ongoing “America’s Presidents” gallery, which draws from the museum’s collection of more than 1,700 portraits of those who have held the nation’s highest office. The National Portrait Gallery holds the only complete collection of official presidential portraits outside of The White House. A suite of public programs that will take place in 2026, including the museum’s annual Presidential Family Fun Day, dance performances, and a new season of its PORTRAITS podcast, will be announced at a later date.
Select Upcoming Exhibitions
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Credit: Amy Sherald, “What’s precious inside of him does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence (All American),” 2017; private collection, Chicago; © Amy Sherald; photo: Joseph Hyde, courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
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Amy Sherald: American Sublime The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will host the Washington, D.C. presentation of “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” the artist’s first major museum survey. “American Sublime” will consider the powerful impact of Sherald’s work in the art historical tradition of American realism and the artist’s privileging of Black American sitters. New and rarely seen work from 2007 to the present will be joined by the artist’s now iconic portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama (2018), commissioned by the Portrait Gallery for its collection, and her powerful portrait of Breonna Taylor (2020). The exhibition will also mark the return of “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)” (2014) to Washington, where the painting garnered first prize in the Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” is accompanied by an eponymous publication—the artist’s first comprehensive monograph—published by SFMOMA in association with Yale University Press. Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” is curated by Sarah Roberts, former Andrew W. Mellon Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture at SFMOMA. The Washington presentation of “American Sublime” is curated by Rhea L. Combs, director of curatorial affairs for the National Portrait Gallery. The Portrait Gallery is grateful to the Ford Foundation whose support has made the Washington, D.C., presentation of this exhibition possible.
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Credit: “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” presented by the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. |
The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today Held every three years, the competition has accelerated participants’ careers. Past first-prize winners of the triennial competition include David Lenz (2006), Dave Woody (2009), Bo Gehring (2013), Amy Sherald (2016), Hugo Crosthwaite (2019), and Alison Elizabeth Taylor (2022). Prizewinners for the 2025 competition include: David Antonio Cruz (New York, NY), Kameron Neal (Brooklyn, NY), and Jared Soares (Washington, D.C.). A ceremony announcing the order of this year’s prizes will take place as part of the exhibition’s opening. The first-prize winner will receive $25,000 and a commission to portray a remarkable living American for the Portrait Gallery’s collection. Guest jurors for the 2025 competition include Carla Acevedo-Yates, the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Huey Copeland, the BFC Presidential Associate Professor of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; LaToya Ruby Frazier, artist; and Daniel Lind-Ramos, artist. The exhibition’s co-curators, Taína Caragol and Charlotte Ickes, also served on the jury with Rhea L. Combs, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs. The competition and exhibition are made possible by the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Endowment, which was established by Virginia Outwin Boochever, a longtime docent at the National Portrait Gallery. The endowment is sustained by her family. |
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Credit: Wendy Red Star, Alaxchiiaahush/Many War Achievements / Plenty Coups, 2014. Artist-manipulated digitally reproduced photograph by C.M. (Charles Milton) Bell from the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy Wendy Red Star. © Wendy Red Star.
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Wendy Red Star: Whispering Spirit (working title) |
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Credit: Dolley Madison by John Plumbe Jr., quarter-plate daguerreotype, c. 1846.
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Photographic Memory: Fifty Years of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery Among the earliest works to be featured will be the recently acquired daguerreotype of Dolley Madison by John Plumbe Jr.; Alexander Gardner’s original “cracked-plate” portrait of Abraham Lincoln; British camera artist Julia Margaret Cameron’s image of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and rare cabinet card photographs of Ida B. Wells-Barnett by Sallie E. Garrity, and Ko K’un-hua by George K. Warren. Twentieth-century portraits will include W.E.B. Du Bois by Addison N. Scurlock; Lee Miller by Man Ray; John Steinbeck by Sonya Noskowiak; Eleanor Roosevelt by Yousuf Karsh; Anna May Wong by Nickolas Muray; Bessie Smith by Carl Van Vechten; Isamu Noguchi by George Platt Lynes; Ruth Asawa by Imogen Cunningham; Rachel Carson by Alfred Eisenstaedt; Mahalia Jackson by Roy DeCarava; Cesar Chavez by Richard Avedon; James Brown by Diane Arbus; and Venus and Serena Williams by Annie Leibovitz. |
National Portrait Gallery
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery tells the multifaceted story of the United States through the individuals who have shaped American culture. Spanning the visual arts, performing arts and new media, the Portrait Gallery portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives tell the nation’s story.
The National Portrait Gallery is located at Eighth and G streets N.W., Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Information: (202) 633-1000. Connect with the museum at npg.si.edu and on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.
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