National Portrait Gallery Celebrates 50 Years with Achievements Including More Than 2 Million Visitors

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery celebrates a series of achievements including a record of more than 2 million visitors this fiscal year (ended Sept 30) as it turns the corner on 50 years. The National Portrait Gallery shares its building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Looking ahead to its official 50th anniversary on Oct. 7, the Portrait Gallery wraps a monumental year that included the unveiling of President Barack and Michelle Obama’s portraits by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald respectively, which resulted in unprecedented media coverage, a social media campaign which went viral and record visitor attendance. The 2017–2018 season also featured a number of groundbreaking exhibitions, notably “The Sweat of Their Face: Portrayals of American Workers,” “UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar” (on view through Jan. 6, 2019), “Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now” (on view through March 10, 2019) and “One Year: 1968, An American Odyssey” (on view through May 19, 2019). Still to come as the final exhibition of the museum’s 50^th-anniversary program is a major presentation of more than 75 artist self-portraits entitled, “Eye to I: Self-Portraits from 1900 to Today,” opening Nov. 2.

The recent growth in visitors is up from an annual average of 1.1 million visitors since 2013. In February 2018, the National Portrait Gallery was ranked the third-most visited Smithsonian museum, topped only by the National Air and Space Museum and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. In addition to brick-and-mortar attendance, the Portrait Gallery’s audience also continues to grow in the digital sphere with social media follower increases of 53 percent on Twitter, 19 percent on Facebook and 54 percent on Instagram, this fiscal year alone.

“The National Portrait Gallery’s increased attendance reflects the fact that we are a museum for people, about people, by people, and I’d like to think that the ideas we are presenting through exhibitions and programs—thanks to ever-more innovative and insightful artists—are resonating with contemporary America,” said Kim Sajet, director, Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. “Portraits act as windows into a sitter’s past and mirrors into a viewer’s present, and it is important that they do real work in helping us decide what type of future we, as a nation, want to create together. I’m proud of the fact that the Portrait Gallery is one of the most revisited and cross-generational museums in Washington, D.C., with 66 percent of attendees representing millennials or gen-X individuals whom also reflect the racial diversity of these groups across the country at large. Portraiture as an art form is ‘hot’ right now, and I take pride in believing my amazing colleagues have played a role in making it so popular!”

As the museum enters a new chapter, the Portrait Gallery continues to reach diverse audiences and deepen engagement with visitors. Below are a few examples:

• As part of the Portrait Gallery’s initiative to become fully bilingual (English and Spanish), the museum now has nine dual-language exhibitions.
• The museum’s collection has grown to over 23,000 works since its opening in 1968, and 80 percent of the collection is digitized.
• In 2013, the Portrait Gallery instituted a policy that 50 percent of all collection purchases be of diverse subjects and/or artists.
• In 2013, the Portrait Gallery established its first curatorial position dedicated to Latino art and history, and since 2014, the Portrait Gallery has increased its acquisitions of Latino subjects and/or artists by 90 percent.
• In the past five years, traveling exhibitions from the Portrait Gallery have been shown in 11 museums across the country.
• In 2014, the Portrait Gallery presented the landmark public art installation “Out of Many, One” by Cuba-born artist Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada. The project transformed more than six acres of the National Mall into an aerial portrait composed of soil and sand.
• In 2015, the museum launched the bi-annual Portrait of a Nation Award as part of the inaugural American Portrait Gala to recognize the achievements of leading Americans and raise endowment funds for exhibitions.
• The Portrait Gallery launched the IDENTIFY performance art series in 2015, and the initiative has supported nine artist projects that focus on issues of gender and race.
• The Portrait Gallery was the first Smithsonian museum to have a choreographer-in-residence, partnering with Dana Tai Soon Burgess Dance Company in 2016.
• The Portrait Gallery museum was the first at the Smithsonian to hire a dedicated full-time accessibility program specialist in 2016 and has established ASL tours and programs for visitors with low vision and blindness, offered programs for children on the autism spectrum and provided additional access for individuals with special needs.
• In November 2016, the Portrait Gallery presented “Bill Viola: The Moving Portrait,” its first all-video exhibition in galleries renovated for time-based media.
• In fall 2017, the museum reopened its acclaimed “America’s Presidents” galleries, which include the restored Lansdowne portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart and interactive touch-tables.

As the Portrait Gallery turns 50 this October, it looks forward to welcoming more visitors 364 days a year, admission free. Visit the museum’s website for the Portrait Gallery’s advance exhibition schedule and schedule of upcoming programs and events.