National Portrait Gallery

Eleanor Roosevelt by Bernard T. Frydrysiak, 1946; Oil on canvas; Ford and Marni Roosevelt

First Lady of the World: Eleanor Roosevelt

We recognize the role of first lady as it exists today because of Eleanor Roosevelt. A compassionate and smart woman with an activist spirit, she was not content to just entertain others and serve her husband domestically. She was a public servant intent on sharing her voice with the world in order to do good.

Neil Simon by David Hume Kennerly, 1986. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Gift of Time magazine; © David Hume Kennerly

Neil Simon (1927–2018)

Neil Simon defined American comedy for a generation of television, theater, and movie audiences.

Fannie Hurst by Joseph Margulies, 1929; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; © Estate of Joseph Margulies

Fannie Hurst: Writer, Feminist, Civil Rights Advocate

Lotte Lenya / Saul Bolasni / c. 1954 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / Gift of Lee Boltin

The Legendary Lotte Lenya

Ernest Hemingway / Henry Strater / 1930 / Private collection

Henry Strater’s Portrait of Ernest Hemingway

Young Jewess Arriving at Ellis Island / Lewis Wikes Hine / 1905 / Courtesy Alan Klotz Gallery / Photocollect, Inc. / New York City

Starting at the Source: Lewis Hine and Labor

Between 1904 and 1926, the American photographer Lewis Hine (1874–1940) photographed countless newcomers at the Ellis Island Immigration Station in New York Harbor. While there, he trained his lens on people of all ages, from infants to the elderly, coping with the emotions and monotony of the bureaucratic processes. Many of these photographs, including the Young Jewess Arriving at Ellis Island (1905), now in the exhibition The Sweat of Their Face: Portraying American Workers (on view through September 3, 2018), have become the go-to images used to illustrate the history of immigration to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century.

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