Founding of the museum , whose art collection was one of the foundations of the National Portrait Gallery collection The first portrait gallery in the United States was
Charles Willson Peale's
American Pantheon, also known as ''Peale's Collection of Portraits of American Patriots'', established in 1796. It closed after two years. In 1859, the
National Portrait Gallery in London opened, but few Americans took notice. The idea of a federally owned national portrait gallery can be traced back to 1886, when Robert C. Winthrope, president of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, visited the
National Portrait Gallery in London. Upon his return to the United States, Winthrope began pressing for the establishment of a similar museum in the United States. In January 1919, the
Smithsonian Institution entered into a cooperative endeavor with the
American Federation of Arts and the American Mission to Negotiate Peace to create a National Art Committee. The committee's goal was to commission portraits of famous leaders from the various nations involved in World War I. Among the committee's members were oil company executive
Herbert L. Pratt,
Ethel Sperry Crocker, an art aficionado and wife of
William Henry Crocker, the founder of
Crocker National Bank, architect
Abram Garfield,
Mary Williamson Averell, wife of railway executive
E. H. Harriman, financier
J. P. Morgan, attorney
Charles Phelps Taft, brother of President
William Howard Taft, steel magnate
Henry Clay Frick, and paleontologist
Charles Doolittle Walcott. The portraits commissioned went on display in the
National Museum of Natural History in May 1921. This formed the nucleus of what would become the National Portrait Gallery Collection. In 1937,
Andrew Mellon donated his large collection of classic and modernist art to the United States, which led to the foundation of the
National Gallery of Art. The collection included a large number of portraits. Mellon asked that, should a portrait gallery be created, the portraits be transferred to it.
David E. Finley, Jr., an attorney and one of Mellon's closest friends, was named the first director of the National Gallery of Art, and he pushed hard over the next several years for the establishment of a portrait gallery. Shortly thereafter, the Smithsonian Art Commission asked the Chancellor of the Smithsonian to appoint a committee to organize a national portrait museum and to plan for the establishment of this museum in the Old Patent Office Building. This committee was created in 1960. The enabling legislation defined its purpose as displaying portraits of "men and women who have made significant contributions to the history, development, and culture of the people of the United States." It opened to the public on October 7, 1968.
Building the collection The Old Patent Office Building was renovated in 1969 by the architectural firm of Faulkner, Fryer and Vanderpool. The renovation won the American Institute of Architects National Honor Award in 1970. The following year, the NPG began the National Portrait Survey, an attempt to catalog and photograph all portraits in all formats held by every public and private collection and museum in the country. On July 4, 1973, the NPG opened "The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770–1800", the first exhibit at the museum dedicated solely to African Americans.
Philanthropist Paul Mellon donated 761 portraits by French-American engraver
C.B.J.F. de Saint-Mémin to the museum in 1974. This permitted the NPG to begin collecting photographs. The
Library of Congress had long opposed the move in order to protect its own role in collecting photographs, but NPG Director Marvin Sadik fought hard to have the ban eliminated. In May 1978,
Time magazine donated 850 original portraits which had graced its cover between 1928 and 1978. A major exhibit of these pieces debuted in May 1979. NPG director Marvin Sadik declined to cancel the sale, arguing that the portraits were of national historic value and belonged in the Smithsonian. A campaign by prominent Bostonians tried to raise $5 million to keep the portraits in Massachusetts.
Boston Mayor Kevin H. White sued to keep the portraits in Boston, naming
Massachusetts Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti, whose office the Commonwealth's constitution designates "custodian of public property" in the suit. "Everybody knows Washington has no culture—they have to buy it," White said. On April 12, the Athenaeum and NPG agreed to delay the sale until December 31, 1979, to give the Boston fund-raising effort a chance. Although not completely successful, the lawsuit had one effect: Attorney General Bellotti announced in mid-summer that the Stuart portraits could not be sold without his permission. With public and political pressure on the Smithsonian to resolve the issue, the Museum of Fine Arts and NPG agreed on February 7, 1980, to jointly purchase the portraits. Under the agreement, the paintings would spend three years at the National Portrait Gallery (beginning in July 1980), and then three years in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts. Attorney General Bellotti approved the plan in March. Per the agreement, the portraits went on display in Washington on July 1, 1980. NPG director Marvin Sadik, who had expressed his dissatisfaction over the Stuart painting controversy, took a six-month-long sabbatical in January 1981. He announced his retirement from the museum in July. In December, the museum obtained a bust of
Alexander Hamilton by
John Trumbull (which may have been sculpted from the portrait which was later used for the $10 bill) and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of
Representative Fisher Ames from the
Henry Cabot Lodge family in Massachusetts. The following April, Varina Webb Stewart and Joel A.H. Webb presented important portraits of
Jefferson Davis and his wife,
Varina Howell Davis, to the National Portrait Gallery. (Stewart and Webb were the Davis' great-grandchildren.) By 1981, the museum had more than 2,000 items in its collection. Using historically accurate chemicals, paper, and techniques, prints were made of the negatives and the prints placed on rotating display.
The Washington Post later described the importance of the acquisition by saying it made the NPG the "epicenter" for Brady scholarship. Later that year, 5,400 Civil War-era glass negatives produced by photographer
Alexander Gardner were also purchased from the Meserve family. This included the famous "cracked-plate" portrait of
Abraham Lincoln taken in February 1865, which was the last photographic portrait of Lincoln taken before his death in April 1865. The second major purchase was an
Edgar Degas portrait of his friend, Mary Cassatt, for which the museum paid $1.3 million. The museum suffered a major theft in 1984 — although it was not a portrait. On December 31, 1984, a thief pried open a display case and stole four handwritten documents accompanying several portraits of Civil War generals. One of the documents was written and signed by President Abraham Lincoln. The remaining three were written and signed by Civil War generals
Ulysses S. Grant,
George Meade, and
George Armstrong Custer. The
FBI was contacted and worked with Smithsonian police to investigate the crime. Within two weeks, a historic documents dealer contacted the FBI and said he had been offered the documents for sale. On February 8, 1985, police arrested Norman James Chandler, a part-time mechanic's assistant from Maryland, for the theft. Chandler quickly pleaded guilty. He was sentenced in April 1985 to two years in jail (with all but six months suspended) and two years of probation, and required to pay a $2,000 fine. All four documents were recovered. The late 1980s saw the collection continue to expand, although there were fewer major additions. One significant acquisition was a nude image — a self-portrait painting by Alice Neel acquired in 1985. It was the National Portrait Gallery's first nude work. Neel was 80 years old when she painted it. Two very important
daguerreotypes (an early photographic process) were purchased in the 1990s. The first was of African American
abolitionist and former slave
Frederick Douglass, acquired in 1990. It is one of only four daguerreotypes of Douglass known to exist. That year, the number of images in the museum's photography collection reached 8,500 objects. Six years later, the NPG obtained for $115,000 the earliest known daguerreotype of abolitionist
John Brown, whose
1859 raid on Harpers Ferry helped to spark the Civil War. The portrait was created by African American photographer
Augustus Washington.
Purchasing the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. In the fall of 2000,
Neil Primrose, 7th Earl of Rosebery, offered to sell Gilbert Stuart's
Lansdowne portrait of George Washington to the National Portrait Gallery. The painting was commissioned in April 1796 by
Senator William Bingham of
Pennsylvania—one of the wealthiest men in America at the time. The portrait was given as a gift to
British Prime Minister William Petty FitzMaurice. FitzMaurice was the 2nd Earl of Shelburne, and later became the first
Marquess of Lansdowne (hence the name of the portrait). Lansdowne died in 1805, and in 1890 the painting was purchased by the 5th Earl of Rosebery. The Lansdowne portrait was displayed only three times in the United States (although several copies remained in America). On its third trip in 1968, it was exhibited by the National Portrait Gallery, and it remained there on indefinite loan. Lord Rosebery offered to sell the painting for $20 million, a price at the low end of estimates. But the offer came with a deadline of April 1, 2001. A search for a donor, personally led by Smithsonian Secretary
Lawrence Small and the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, proved fruitless after three months. Worried Smithsonian officials then went public in February 2001 with a plea for a donor to come forth. On March 13, just two weeks before the sale deadline, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation donated $30 million to buy the Lansdowne portrait. Foundation chairman
Fred W. Smith read about failing donor effort in the
Wall Street Journal on February 26. Although the Reynolds Foundation generally only made grants in the areas of elder care, cardiovascular research, and journalism, assisting with the Lansdowne purchase fell within the foundation's "special projects" area of responsibility. NPG Director
Marc Pachter flew to
Nevada to meet with foundation officials on March 3, and the foundation approved the donation the following day. The $30 million donation included $6 million to put the portrait on a national tour for three years (the NPG was closed for renovations until 2006), and $4 million to construct a new area in the Old Patent Office Building to display it. NPG said it would name this display area for
Donald W. Reynolds, the media baron who created the foundation.
Post-renovation activities The National Portrait Gallery closed in January 2000 for a renovation of the Old Patent Office Building. Intended to take two years and cost $42 million, the renovation took seven years and cost $283 million. Inflation, delays in obtaining approval for the renovation design, the addition of a glass canopy over the open courtyard, and other issues led to increases in both time and costs. During this period, most of the NPG's collection went on tour around the United States. In March 2007, a multi-year study of leadership at eight Smithsonian museums made recommendations about the National Portrait Gallery. The report concluded that the museum needed stronger, more visionary leadership intent on creating a truly national museum. The report also called for "administrative consolidation" of the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After the 2008 presidential election, the National Portrait Gallery obtained graphic artist
Shepard Fairey's ubiquitous "Hope" poster of Barack Obama. Obama supporter
Tony Podesta and his wife, Heather, donated it to the museum.
Hide/Seek controversy In November 2010, the National Portrait Gallery hosted a major new exhibit, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture", curated by
David C. Ward and Jonathan Katz. The exhibit focused on depictions of homosexual love through history, and was the first exhibit hosted by a museum of national stature to address the topic. It was also the largest and most expensive exhibit in the NPG's history, and more private donors contributed to it than to any prior NPG exhibit. The exhibit was scheduled to run from October 30, 2010, to February 13, 2011. Within days of its opening,
Catholic League president
William A. Donohue labeled
A Fire in My Belly hate speech, anti-Catholic, and anti-Christian. A spokesperson for Representative
John Boehner, incoming
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, called it an "arrogant" abuse of the public trust and a misuse of taxpayer money, although it was funded by private donations.
House Majority Leader Representative
Eric Cantor threatened to reduce the Smithsonian's budget if the film remained on view. After consulting with National Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan, co-curator David C. Ward (but not with co-curator
Jonathan David Katz), Smithsonian Undersecretary Richard Kurin, and the Smithsonian's government affairs and public relations offices, Smithsonian Secretary
G. Wayne Clough ordered
A Fire in My Belly removed from the exhibit on November 30. The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, which donated $10,000 to support the exhibit, also ended all funding for future Smithsonian exhibitions. Both decisions drew criticism from some gay rights supporters, who felt the funding cuts were too draconian since the remainder of the pieces continued to be exhibited. The controversy lasted through the exhibit's scheduled run. In late January 2011, the Smithsonian Board of Regents unanimously gave Clough a vote of confidence, saying his accomplishments in improving the Smithsonian's administration, finances, governance, and maintenance in the past 19 months far outweighed the damage done by the "Hide/Seek" controversy. Clough admitted, however, that he may have acted too hastily in the matter (although he continued to say he made the right decision), and the regents asked for Smithsonian staff to study the controversy and report back on how to handle such events in the future. Not everyone in the Smithsonian agreed with the regents. The
Washington Post reported that some (unnamed) Smithsonian museum directors and curators felt there would be a
chilling effect from Clough's decision. The Board of Directors of the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden wrote an
open letter to Clough in which they said they were "deeply troubled by the precedent" to remove the film.
Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition In 2006, the museum began hosting a triennial, juried contemporary portrait exhibition called the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Named after long time docent and volunteer Virginia Outwin Boochever, this competition is widely regarded as the most prestigious
portrait competition in the
United States. Artists working in the fields of
painting,
drawing,
sculpture,
photography, and other media are allowed to enter. Works must be created through a face-to-face encounter with the subject. The inaugural competition in 2006 drew more than 4000 entries, from which 51 finalists were chosen. For the 2013 competition the total prize money of $42,000 was awarded to the top eight commended artists, and the winner received $25,000 and a commission to make a portrait for the museum's permanent collection. The subject of the commission is decided jointly by the artist and the NPG curators. The 2006 winner was
David Lenz of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he was commissioned to paint a portrait of
Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of
Special Olympics. It was the first portrait commissioned of an individual who has not served as a
president or
first lady. The 2009 winner, Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, was commissioned to photograph food pioneer
Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse Restaurant and Cafe, the
Edible Schoolyard and champion of the
Slow Food movement. The 2013 winner was Bo Gehring of Beacon, New York, who was commissioned to direct a video portrait of jazz musician
Esperanza Spalding.
2010-Present In 2012, the National Portrait Gallery sponsored a new temporary exhibit, "Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets", which focused on images of great American poets. The NPG collection had grown so large that the exhibit drew its images almost entirely from the museum's own collection. In July 2025, Michelle Obama portrait artist
Amy Sherald withdrew her solo show "American Sublime" from the gallery, after the gallery discussed removing from the show a portrait of the Statue of Liberty as a black trans woman - in response to internal concerns about provoking
President Donald Trump. The gallery had proposed replacing the portrait with a video display of people reacting to the painting and discussing transgender issues, but according to Sherald the video had included anti-trans rhetoric, and so she rejected it. In January 2026,
The Washington Post reported that the Gallery updated the portrait of
Donald Trump in the "America's Presidents" exhibition and had removed the old placard, replacing the caption which mentioned his Supreme Court appointments, efforts relating to development of coronavirus vaccines, his impeachments as well as other events with one simply noting Trump's years in office. ==Collection==