National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Elvis in the Army by Howard Finster

Elvis Presley’s humble nature and patriotism appealed greatly to visionary artist Howard Finster. Born in 1915 in DeKalb County, Alabama, Finster claimed to have his first vision in early childhood; his later visions would dictate decisions affecting both his life and his art. Finster was an evangelical Baptist minister before coming to view painting as the vehicle chosen for him to spread the gospel.

Included in the current NPG “Echoes of Elvis” exhibition are two of Finster’s painted, wood-cutout Elvis images: Elvis at Three (below) and Elvis in Army Uniform (above), both done in 1990 and from the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Elvis at Three, which features a baby Elvis Presley adorned with angel wings and inscribed with Bible verses, conjures Finster’s idea of Elvis as a special Christian emissary on earth. Elvis in Army Uniform presents a more secular image of Presley with a reference to his military service.

Elvis’s military service could not have come at a more inconvenient moment from a career perspective. On July 8, 1954, Elvis’s single “That’s All Right, Mama,” was first played on Memphis radio. Within two years, Elvis was nationally known and had a number of gold records. By 1958, he had also become box-office gold, and his career seemed boundless. He ascent was put on hiatus, however, as he complied with his government draft notice. Elvis entered in the United States army in 1958, served for two years, and was honorably discharged in 1960.

Listen to Warren Perry's Face-to-Face talk on Elvis in the army (27:55)

Face-to-Face occurs every Thursday evening at the National Portrait Gallery. The next talk is Thursday, June 3, when curator Anne Goodyear speaks about artist Jim Torok's work, on view in "Portraiture Now: Communities." 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.

Elvis in army uniform / Howard Finster (1916–2001) / Paint on wood, 1991 / High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; purchase with funds from the Cousins Foundation, Inc., and donors to the Paradise Project

Campaign Elvis at Three / Howard Finster (1916–2001) / Paint and ink on wood, 1990 / High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; purchase with funds from the Cousins Foundation, Inc., and donors to the Paradise Project Campaign

Article by Warren Perry, curator of "Echoes of Elvis"

Protocol of Portrait Display of the U.S. President, Vice President, & Cabinet Members

Recently, the Catalog of American Portraits received an interesting inquiry from another office within the United States government. The inquiry, answer, follow-up question, and follow-up answer ran as follows:  

How do we determine the protocol of administrative portraits in a display consisting of the president, the vice president, and the officers of the cabinet?

1. The president and the vice president are displayed side by side in the center of the wall, with the president on the left, the vice president on the right.

2. The respective secretaries of the cabinet departments are displayed below, in a line, left to right, beginning on the left with the secretary of the oldest cabinet department (State) and concluding on the right with the secretary of the newest cabinet department (secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of defense, attorney general, secretary of the interior, secretary of agriculture, secretary of commerce, secretary of labor, secretary of health and human services, secretary of housing and urban development, secretary of transportation, secretary of energy, secretary of education, secretary of veterans affairs, secretary of homeland security). This is also the line of presidential succession after the Speaker of the House and the Senate pro tempore.

Notice the postmaster general is not in the cabinet anymore; the office of postmaster general was abolished as a cabinet position in 1971.

How would just one cabinet member’s photo would be displayed; e.g., where should a single secretary’s photo be placed in relation to the president and the vice president, and would their  positions change with the addition of the third photo?

Once again, the president’s portrait is in the center, but this time, the vice president is removed to the left, and below, but not lower than the halfway point of the image of the president, and the secretary of state (for example) is to the right, and below, but not lower than the halfway point of the image of the president. In this hanging, the vice president and the secretary of state are at the same height, again, slightly below the height of the president but not more than halfway down the vertical length of the president.

The above is based on the size of the portraits all being equal. If that is not the case, and the image of the president is larger than the image of the vice president and the secretary of state, then the arrangement left to right remains the same, but the other images can be brought up such that the centerline of the images are all three equal in height or such that the bottom line of all three images are equal in height.

 - Warren Perry, National Portrait Gallery 

Thanks to Ellen Miles, NPG curator emerita of paintings and sculpture, for her great assistance with this inquiry and article.

Rosalynn Carter Visits NPG

Photo by Warren Perry

It has been almost thirty years since President Jimmy Carter and his wife, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, left the White House. In that time, both President and Mrs. Carter have worked tirelessly on humanitarian efforts and both, now in their eighties, continue to work for multiple causes, never assuming that their octogenarian status implies that they should retire or that their work is somehow finished.

Rosalynn Carter has spent more than thirty-five years as an advocate on behalf of mental health issues, and on Friday, May 7, she brought her campaign to the National Portrait Gallery, discussing mental health and signing copies of her latest book, Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis.

One of the inspiring stories Mrs. Carter tells is that of Joel Slack, a former patient who suffered from psychiatric disorders in the form of schizophrenia. After his initial breakdown, Slack underwent years of treatment. He eventually became a mental health advocate and founder of Respect International, whose mission is “an advocacy, humanitarian, and educational non-profit organization, created out of the need of persons with psychiatric challenges to be treated with respect, to experience hope, and to be provided with the basic needs to live.” In Within Our Reach, Slack states that family became the final part of his healing process, as “My wife and daughter have helped transform me, to take me from a life of a psychiatric patient to a real personhood.”

Mrs. Carter concludes, “It is that impulse toward full personhood that I wish for everyone who has lived and struggled with a mental illness. I am sure that one day soon it will be possible—it is within our reach.”

Lena Horne, 1917–2010

Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather since my man and I ain’t together
Keeps raining all the time, the time
Life is bare, gloom and misery everywhere
Stormy weather, just can’t get my poor self together
It’s raining all the time, the time . . .

The song “Stormy Weather” was nearly a decade old when Lena Horne made it her own in 1943. And although the tune was recorded by many others—among them Billie Holiday and Etta James—it will forever be associated with the artist for whom it became a personal soundtrack.

While battling racism and stigmatized by red-scare branding, Horne remained a fixture on American stage and screen until 1999, when she left public life. During her career, she received four Grammy Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and, in 1982, a special Tony Award. She was also received the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts honors in 1984. Her films included Panama Hattie (1942), Stormy Weather (1943), Cabin in the Sky (1943), and The Wiz (1978). Her Broadway blockbuster Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music was perhaps the pinnacle of a career laden with superlatives.

Lena Horne, one of the most treasured performers of the twentieth century, died last Sunday in New York City.

Lena Horne / Edward Biberman / Oil on canvas, 1947 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution / © 1947 Edward Biberman

Remembering Dorothy Height

We remember her not solely for all she did during the civil rights movement. We remember her for all she did over a lifetime, behind the scenes, to broaden the movement's reach, to shine a light on stable families and tight-knit communities, to make us see the drive for civil rights and women's rights not as a separate struggle, but as part of a larger movement to secure the rights of all humanity, regardless of gender, regardless of race, regardless of ethnicity.
—President Barak Obama, April 29, 2010

Dorothy Height was an individual of epic influence. From early in the post–Harlem Renaissance to the Obama administration, Height's voice was in unison with the cause of equality. Her leadership was unquestionable; for more than four decades she served as president of the National Council of Negro Women, whose membership ran into the millions. She was within an arm's reach of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, and she was there again on October 16, 1995, as a featured speaker during the Million Man March. For championing civil rights over the course of her lifetime, Height received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

President Barak Obama eulogized Height as an individual who never lost sight of the struggle to better the human condition, and one who did not seek glory as she "went about her work quietly, without fanfare, without self-promotion. She never cared about who got the credit. She didn't need to see her picture in the papers.”

Hear Dorothy Height tell her story in her own words. On March 19, 1997, she was interviewed at the National Portrait Gallery and spoke about her childhood in Rankin, Pennsylvania, her beginnings as an activist in Harlem, and her emergence as a civil rights leader. She was interviewed by the Smithsonian’s Marc Pachter.

Book Signing & Discussion with Rosalynn Carter, this Friday, May 7

On Friday, May 7, the National Portrait Gallery is hosting a book-signing with author and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Carter brought a new way of thinking about the first lady’s role to the White House: she left the décor as it was; she wore an inaugural gown that she already worn; and she expanded the traditional role of her staff to also fulfill her own campaign promise to guide legislation on behalf of the mentally ill—a cause that she continues to advocate. Modeling herself after Eleanor Roosevelt, as first lady she recognized and brought to the nation’s attention that the presidential spouse’s role is a key factor in fulfilling presidential duties.

On Friday, May 7, she will discuss and then autograph her latest book Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis in the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard from noon to 1:30 p.m.

Within Our Reach is an insightful, unsparing assessment of the state of mental health care that uses stories from Carter’s thirty-five years of advocacy to discuss the larger issues at hand. In it, Carter crafts an intimate and powerful account of a subject previously shrouded in stigma and shadow, surveying the dimensions of an issue that has affected everyone. Those who would like to attend may preorder copies of Within Our Reach by calling the museum store at (202) 633-5451 from 11:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily. Books maybe picked up after April 27. Positions in the signing line will be determined by the number on cash-register receipts. For more information, see the NPG events calendar.

Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter /  Ansel Adams / Polaroid Polacolor print, 1979 / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. James Earl Carter, Jr.

Top image: Rosalynn Carter / Wilford Harewood/The Carter Center / Atlanta, Ga., U.S.A.