National Portrait Gallery
'Women of Our Time' at the Portrait Gallery
Cameras love women. There’s something in the curve of a woman’s lip, or the way a strand of hair falls across her brow. Whether a woman intends to portray herself as beautiful or not, the female image is a compelling work of art. At the National Portrait Gallery, a new exhibition, Women of Our Ti...
October 17, 2008 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Recent History: Michael Phelps at the Portrait Gallery
It’s 11:18 on a damp Thursday morning. A few women with umbrellas sip cups of coffee outside the doors of the National Portrait Gallery. It won’t open for another 12 minutes, but a crowd is gathering in the foyer.They’re gawking at a portrait of one of the heroes of the 2008 Olympic Games, the eigh...
August 28, 2008 |
By Anika Gupta
Public Punk'd by Panda: Mei Xiang is NOT Pregnant!
In spite of months of maternal showboating, Mei Xiang will not be bearing a panda cub this year. Experts at the National Zoo speculate that she either experienced another pseudopregnancy or lost an early-stage fetus that failed to develop. Having kept close tabs on Mei since her artificial insemina...
August 14, 2008 |
By Jesse Rhodes
All in a Word
Museum goers might be stumped for a minute by an old-fashioned word in the title of a new show, "Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture," opening Friday at the National Portrait Gallery.Ballyhoo?I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used it in a sentence and wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. Here, fo...
May 08, 2008 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Poking Fun at the Presidents
Herblock was not fond of Ronald Reagan.
In fact, the three-time Pulitzer prize-winning political cartoonist judged the "great communicator" rather harshly. In a 1984 portrayal, the 40th President of the United States is transformed into a television pitchman selling America an alternate r...
April 30, 2008 |
By Kenneth R. Fletcher
Stephen Colbert Declared A National Treasure
Last night marked a new chapter in the Stephen Colbert—Smithsonian saga. American History Museum director Brent Glass has had a change of heart. Stephen Colbert, he says, is a National Treasure.It started back in January, when the Comedy Central satirist met with Glass and lobbied him to include a ...
April 02, 2008 |
By Kenneth R. Fletcher
Portrait Gallery's Hip-Hop Exhibition Opens Friday
"RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture," which opens Friday at the National Portrait Gallery, puts a uniquely modern spin on the age-old tradition of portraiture.Visitors are greeted to the exhibit by bright graffiti art painted on a trompe l’oeil train, which was the subject of an articl...
February 07, 2008 |
By Kenneth R. Fletcher
Portraits of Resistance
The inaugural show of the National Museum of African American History and Culture
February 2008 |
By Lucinda Moore
Stephen Scores! (Well, Sorta)
Snarkmeister Stephen Colbert's portrait is now on view at the National Portrait Gallery. Find it on the second floor—kinda, sorta nigh on to George Washington.Actually, closer to the restrooms. (See it there until March 2).Asked to comment, the museum's director Marc Pachter acquiesced: "This is ...
January 18, 2008 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Mystery on Mall: Case Closed
Last week we asked for help identifying a picture.Let's call it a Slight of Flight, space flight that is. The mystery image is of the heat shield from the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia.In 1969, Columbia carried astronauts Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin to the moon and back for t...
November 27, 2007 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Justice Cowgirl
Monday night, the National Portrait Gallery gave the retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor the chance to do her own self-portrait—in words, that is.The portrait O'Connor painted for her audience was less the judicial scholar that one might expect. Her salt-of-the-earth story includes ...
November 01, 2007 |
By Megan Gambino
First-Person Curator
In this new Around the Mall blog feature, Smithsonian curators offer insight into their work as they prepare exhibitions and study the nation's treasures. Today curator Amy Henderson from the National Portrait Gallery remembers when she visited with the late, great Katharine Hepburn.
Amy Henderso...
October 29, 2007 |
By Beth Py-Lieberman
Grand Reopening: Speaking of Art
Two museums return home and invite visitors to engage in "conversations."
July 2006 |
By Arthur Lubow
Picturing Pocahontas
An image at the National Portrait Gallery may be the truest account we have of the Indian princess
January 1999 |
By John F. Ross
Around the Mall & Beyond
Alan Fern, director of the National Portrait Gallery, offers his insights on the art of reading a portrait
December 1995 |
By Michael Kernan
