Just a few blocks off the National Mall, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary with a year of portraiture from historic treasures to new work by contemporary artists.
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, more than 1 million visitors a year experience the Portrait Gallery.
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.
Beginning in Fall 2025, the Portrait Gallery will host the D.C. presentation of Amy Sherald: American Sublime (Sept. 19, 2025 – Feb. 22, 2026). Organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), American Sublime is the artist’s first major museum survey. New and rarely seen work will be on view alongside the artist’s now iconic portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama (2018) and her painting, Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance) (2014), which garnered first prize in the Portrait Gallery’s 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition.
Coinciding with American Sublime will be The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today (Oct. 18, 2025 - Aug. 30, 2026) featuring a juried selection of 35 portraits—including new winners—from entries to the museum’s seventh national Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Visitors will have the chance to vote for their own favorites as part of the competition’s People’s Choice Award.
Credit: Dolley Madison by John Plumbe Jr., quarter-plate daguerreotype, c. 1846.
In May 2026 “Photographic Memory: Fifty Years of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery” (May 15, 2026 – Feb. 28, 2027) will explore the evolution of photographic portraiture through more than one hundred works from the daguerreian era to today’s digital age. On view will be Portrait Gallery collection gems including a c. 1846 daguerreotype of Dolley Madison and Alexander Gardner’s original “cracked plate” portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
Visitors will also be able to explore the museum’s America’s Presidents gallery (ongoing) which draws from its collection of more than 1,700 portraits of those who have held the nation’s highest office. The National Portrait Gallery remains the only complete collection of presidential portraits outside of The White House.
The National Portrait Gallery is located at G and 8th Streets NW. Open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free.