The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery presents “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today,” featuring 35 portraits (by 36 artists) from the museum’s seventh triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The juried selection draws from more than 3,300 entries, and includes artist contributions from 14 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Taína Caragol, curator of painting and sculpture for the National Portrait Gallery, is the director of the 2025 competition. She and Charlotte Ickes, curator of time-based media art and special projects for the Portrait Gallery, are co-organizing the exhibition.
Established in 2006, the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition invites artists (ages 18 and over) living and working in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, to submit one portrait created in the past three years for consideration by a panel of experts. The first-prize winner receives $25,000 and a commission to portray a remarkable living American for the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. Additional prizes in the amounts of $10,000 and $7,500 are awarded to second- and third-place winners, respectively. 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, DC). A ceremony announcing the order of this year’s prizes will take place timed with the exhibition’s opening.
Guest jurors for the 2205 competition were 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.
“The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” will premiere at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., from October 18, 2025, through August 30, 2026, before touring to other cities in the United States.
