Past Exhibitions

  • woman in black on a black motorcycle

    Recent Acquisitions: Gifts from the Corcoran Gallery of Art

    October 9, 2020 - October 23, 2022

    In 2014, the Corcoran transferred the college to George Washington University and distributed the collection. The National Portrait Gallery received eighty portraits, ranging from images of nineteenth-century American presidents to twentieth-century artists, athletes, and movie stars. This exhibition features a selection of portraits from this generous gift.

  • Man waving at a crowd while preparing to board a helicopter

    Watergate: Portraiture and Intrigue

    March 25, 2022 - September 5, 2022

    This exhibition combines portraiture and visual biography from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection to bring visitors face-to-face with Watergate’s key players.

  • Woman in a regal dress

    IDENTIFY

    June 25, 2022

    This performance art series strives to make visible the invisible.  Each artist selected critiques American portraiture and institutional history by making visible a body or bodies that historically have been forgotten.

  • colorful painting of a group of young Asian women

    Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands

    August 27, 2021 - May 30, 2022

    The National Portrait Gallery presents the first large-scale retrospective of work by Hung Liu, the acclaimed Chinese-born American artist.

  • View of pink orchids

    Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women

    January 29, 2022 - April 24, 2022

    Escape the winter cold and step into a floral oasis in the Kogod Courtyard with Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women. 

  • Woman in a Civil War Union uniform

    Storied Women of the Civil War Era

    May 24, 2019 - March 20, 2022

    During the Civil War era, numerous women rose to national prominence—from First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln to Union spy Pauline Cushman. 

     

  • two small girls in patterned dresses

    “Warranted to Give Satisfaction”: Daguerreotypes by Jeremiah Gurney

    June 25, 2021 - February 6, 2022

    Over the course of nearly two decades in the mid-19th century,  Jeremiah Gurney established himself not only as a masterful daguerreotype technician but also as an uncompromising artist whose prizewinning work was often unmatched in its quality. 

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