Protocol of Portrait Display of the U.S. President, Vice President, & Cabinet Members

Recently, the Catalog of American Portraits received an interesting inquiry from another office within the United States government. The inquiry, answer, follow-up question, and follow-up answer ran as follows:  

How do we determine the protocol of administrative portraits in a display consisting of the president, the vice president, and the officers of the cabinet?

1. The president and the vice president are displayed side by side in the center of the wall, with the president on the left, the vice president on the right.

2. The respective secretaries of the cabinet departments are displayed below, in a line, left to right, beginning on the left with the secretary of the oldest cabinet department (State) and concluding on the right with the secretary of the newest cabinet department (secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of defense, attorney general, secretary of the interior, secretary of agriculture, secretary of commerce, secretary of labor, secretary of health and human services, secretary of housing and urban development, secretary of transportation, secretary of energy, secretary of education, secretary of veterans affairs, secretary of homeland security). This is also the line of presidential succession after the Speaker of the House and the Senate pro tempore.

Notice the postmaster general is not in the cabinet anymore; the office of postmaster general was abolished as a cabinet position in 1971.

How would just one cabinet member’s photo would be displayed; e.g., where should a single secretary’s photo be placed in relation to the president and the vice president, and would their  positions change with the addition of the third photo?

Once again, the president’s portrait is in the center, but this time, the vice president is removed to the left, and below, but not lower than the halfway point of the image of the president, and the secretary of state (for example) is to the right, and below, but not lower than the halfway point of the image of the president. In this hanging, the vice president and the secretary of state are at the same height, again, slightly below the height of the president but not more than halfway down the vertical length of the president.

The above is based on the size of the portraits all being equal. If that is not the case, and the image of the president is larger than the image of the vice president and the secretary of state, then the arrangement left to right remains the same, but the other images can be brought up such that the centerline of the images are all three equal in height or such that the bottom line of all three images are equal in height.

 - Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery 

Thanks to Ellen Miles, NPG curator emerita of paintings and sculpture, for her great assistance with this inquiry and article.