National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Catalog of American Portraits Inquiry: Presidential Portraits

The National Portrait Gallery's Catalog of American Portraits (CAP) receives public inquiries every day, and the questions are often interesting. Some questions involve research while others are policy-oriented; still others are just seeking general knowledge about museum practice. The following question about our collecting protocols came to us recently. The CAP response follows.

Concerning the collection of paintings commonly called the official presidential portraits. . . .  Are those paintings part of the National Portrait Gallery’s collection? Or are they part of the collection of the White House? Are those paintings maintained and conditioned by the Smithsonian Institution? Are any pieces that are part of the National Portrait Gallery collection ever loaned to the White House?

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery did not open its doors until 1968. By that time, many of the more well-known portraits of the presidents of the United States (as well as portraits of other famous statesmen, soldiers, and American personalities) were already in large collections such as those of the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Early NPG curators had their work cut out for them in assembling the presidential collection, and it is wondrous that such a nice collection could have been put together at such a late date in the history of American material culture collecting.  The National Portrait Gallery was also fortunate in that the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the National Museum of American History all contributed works to establish the NPG collection.

One of the first questions you asked was about the “official presidential portraits.” Those portraits are in the collection of the White House and are maintained by the White House curatorial staff.

Second, yes, there is a friendly relationship between the White House and the NPG; objects have been loaned by each institution to the other. In the early days of NPG, the presidential portraits came from different sources. Some portraits were donated, while others were purchased. Since the time of President George H. W. Bush’s administration, however, the National Portrait Gallery has tried to acquire a portrait of each sitting president while he is in office. “It is up to the individual president to decide on the artist and the circumstances of the sitting, though we may offer advice and suggestions,” says Carolyn Carr, the Portrait Gallery’s deputy director and chief curator. Also, in addition to NPG’s requests to each sitting president for a portrait, NPG now requests portraits of the first lady. “These portraits are funded privately by supporters of each president and first lady,” adds Carr.

Signing of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, by John Christen Johanson (1876-1964), National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of an anonymous donor, 1926

Portrait of Julia Child

With the 1961 publication of her groundbreaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking(co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle), Julia Child launched a highly successful effort to demystify French cuisine by enabling American cooks “to create French dishes in American kitchens with American foods.”

Mastering the Art of French Cooking sold more than 100,000 copies in its first year and also provided the springboard to Child's improbable career in television. In February 1962, just four months after her cookbook's release, Child appeared on a local interview program on WGBH in Boston and matter-of-factly prepared a mushroom omelet. Viewers were enchanted, and letters poured in asking for more opportunities to see Child in action. The result was the debut on July 26, 1962, of The French Chef—the half-hour cooking show on public television that would make Julia Child a household name and a culinary icon.

Rayna Greene, curator at the National Museum of American History, recently discussed Child and her portrait by David Marlin.  Greene was instrumental in bringing Julia Child’s kitchen to the Smithsonian.

Listen to Rayna Green’s Face-to-Face talk on Julia Child (27:57)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tonight (March 25), when Wendy Wick Reaves, curator of prints and drawings at NPG, speaks about Gertrude Stein. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Julia Child / David Marlin / Gelatin silver print, 1971 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; acquired through the generosity of Ann M. Shumard in honor of Thomas D. Matteson

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Lecture: Historic Preservation and Architecture

On Friday, March 5, the National Portrait Gallery paid tribute to one of the United States’s greatest historical preservation advocates and public servants.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) was a member of four successive presidential administrations: those of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, and Gerald R. Ford. He was both ambassador to India and to the United Nations and later served four terms in the United States Senate, beginning in 1976. The late senator was a dedicated and frequent visitor to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. He was also passionate about the Penn Quarter revitalization.

Acting NPG Director Brandon Fortune stated, "Daniel Patrick Moynihan brought all of the strength of his intellect, his instinct for architectural excellence, and his love for history to bear on the redevelopment of the Penn Quarter area of Washington, D.C.—just one example of where these talents were put to use. We are thrilled to have his efforts in the realm of urban planning and historic preservation celebrated through the recent Daniel Patrick Moynihan lecture and panel. "

The late senator was truly an American rags-to-riches story, having been raised in New York in an impoverished home but rising to the highest echelons of world politics. Daniel Patrick Moynihan served in the United States navy; he later attended Tufts University, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in sociology.

Introductions to the lecture were provided by Fortune and Smithsonian Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture Richard Kurin. Four friends and colleagues of Senator Moynihan spoke of his commitment to the arts, architecture, and historical preservation: architect David Childs, former Metropolitan Museum vice president Ashton Hawkins, current president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation Richard Moe, and Public Buildings Service Commissioner Robert Peck.

The National Portrait Gallery’s newest exhibition, “Glimpse of the Past: A Neighborhood Evolves,” is a visual exploration of the neighborhood surrounding one of the oldest federal buildings in Washington, D.C.  The exhibition features images from the 1850s to the present and shows the rise, decline, and revival of the area.  The area now known as Penn Quarter was of interest to Moynihan early on, and he chose to reside here before the neighborhood was teeming with its current activity. 

Listen to the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Lecture (58:53)

The recording does not contain the remarks of Ashton Hawkins, due to technical issues.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan / Boris Chaliapin / Tempera, pencil and ink on board, 1967 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine

Katharine Hepburn: Count ’em—Four Oscars

Screen legend Katharine Hepburn fashioned herself into a cultural icon by sheer will and a shrewd business sense. She won the first of her record four Best Actress Oscars in 1933 for Morning Glory and made several popular films in the mid-1930s. But her subsequent choices like Christopher Strong and Sylvia Scarlett baffled her audience, and by 1938 she was branded “box office poison.” Even such screwball comedies as Bringing Up Baby (1938) failed to renew her popularity, and it wasn't until The Philadelphia Story (1940) that she was back on top.

Hepburn partnered in nine films with Spencer Tracy, winning an Oscar for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. She also won Oscars for The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond. She received a Kennedy Center Honors award in 1990.

In 2009, the National Portrait Gallery acquired Hepburn’s four Oscar statuettes as a gift from the Katharine Hepburn estate. They are now on view in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” gallery on the museum’s third floor, next to a 1982 portrait of Hepburn by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, which she termed her “favorite.”

Amy Henderson, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed Hepburn’s Oscars and her portrait by Ray Kinstler.

Listen to Amy Henderson’s Face-to-Face talk on Katharine Hepburn (23:08)

Learn more about Hepburn by visiting the online exhibition for "KATE: A Centennial Celebration.” This exhibition was on view at the National Portrait Gallery from November 2, 2007, to September 28, 2008.

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is March 18, when Rayna Green, curator at the National Museum of American History, speaks about Julia Child. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Katharine Hepburn's four Best Actress Academy Awards (Morning Glory, 1933; Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967; The Lion in Winter, 1968; On Golden Pond, 1981) / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the estate of Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn / Everett Raymond Kinstler, 1982 / Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery; gift of Everett Raymond Kinstler /© 1982 Everett Raymond Kinstler

Jack Kerouac's Birthday

Jack Kerouac (1922 – 1969) was born eighty-eight years ago today.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . the ones who . . . burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles." Like his character Sal Paradise in On the Road, Jack Kerouac was restless to discover himself in postwar America. His stream-of-consciousness writing style flowed like jazz, encompassing but not always embracing the Beat generation of the 1950s.

Hitchhiking with friend Neil Cassady gave birth to On the Road (1957), which became an instant success. The book, like the roads he traveled, embodied Kerouac's marathon urge to create, having been typed on a continuous roll of taped-together paper measuring 120 feet in length. Troubled by fame, critics, and his inability to break free of beatnik stereotypes, Kerouac sought solace in alcohol, which led to his early death.

Jack Kerouac  / Frederick W. McDarrah / Gelatin silver print,1959  / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution © Fred W. McDarrah

Portrait of Clement Greenberg by René Bouché

Art critic and public intellectual Clement Greenberg was one of the most important advocates for American abstract painting after World War II. Championing such artists as Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and especially Jackson Pollock, Greenberg provided the art-historical background to what he called "abstract expressionism."

Pugnacious and driven by a sense of cultural mission, Greenberg, in his criticism and in articles like "'American Type' Painting" (1955), became the model of the engaged intellectual, making as many enemies as he did friends.  As he said, "The first obligation of an art critic is to deliver value judgments."

The art world eventually turned on Greenberg, but his four volumes of collected writings are an unmatched survey of American art and culture in the mid-twentieth century. René Bouché's 1955 portrait of Greenberg was praised as an abstraction "softening the edges of representation."

David Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, recently discussed this portrait of Clement Greenberg by René Bouché at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. The work is displayed on the museum’s third floor, in the exhibition “Twentieth-Century Americans.”

Listen to David Ward’s Face-to-Face talk on Clement Greenberg (33:22)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is tomorrow (March 11), when Amy Henderson, historian at NPG, speaks about Katharine Hepburn and her four Oscars. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Clement Greenberg / René Bouché / Oil on canvas, 1955 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Denise Bouché Fitch

Portrait of Thurgood Marshall by Betsy Graves Reyneau

Thurgood Marshall played a major role in the 1940s and 1950s as a leader in the struggle to end racial discrimination in the United States. From 1938 to 1961, he served as chief staff lawyer for the NAACP.  Marshall devoted much effort to tailoring arguments that led the Supreme Court to its unanimous 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education of the City of Topeka decision, which ruled segregation of public schools by race to be unconstitutional. But he realized that the struggle was not over.

At a party celebrating the Brown decision, Marshall warned his colleagues, “I don’t want any of you to fool yourselves, it's just begun; the fight has just begun.” He went on to become the first African American Supreme Court justice, nominated by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

L. Michael Seidman, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and a former clerk of Justice Marshall’s, recently discussed this portrait at a Face-to-Face portrait talk. The work is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in the new permanent exhibition "The Struggle for Justice" on the museum’s second floor.

Listen to L. Michael Seidman’s Face-to-Face talk on Thurgood Marshall (31:17)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is Thursday, March 4, when David Ward, historian at the National Portrait Gallery, speaks about art critic Clement Greenberg. The talk runs from 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. Visitors meet the presenter in the museum’s F Street lobby and then walk to the appropriate gallery.

Thurgood Marshall / Betsy Graves Reyneau / Oil on canvas, 1956 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the Harmon Foundation

Happy 79th Birthday, Tom Wolfe!

Armed with a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University (1957), Tom Wolfe became a journalist, working for several prominent newspapers and magazines. His articles on such varied topics as stock-car racing, pop culture, and sports figures like Muhammad Ali soon brought him wide attention—as well as strong criticism—for their writing style, known as "New Journalism."

Collections of Wolfe's controversial articles from this era include The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965). Subsequent books include The Right Stuff (1979), his study of the early years of the American space program, and From Bauhaus to Our House (1981), his criticism of modern architecture. His satires, such as The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987), continued his social commentary in fictional form.

In this portrait, Wolfe’s friend Ray Kinstler depicted him in a white three-piece suit, a style that Wolfe first adopted in the 1960s. The work is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in the exhibition "Twentieth-Century Americans" on the museum's third floor.

Tom  Wolfe / Everett Raymond Kinstler / Oil on canvas, 2000 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Sheila Wolfe; © 2002 Everett Raymond Kinstler