PORTRAITS
National Portrait GalleryPORTRAITS
Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Join Director Kim Sajet as she chats with artists, historians, and thought leaders about the big and small ways that portraits shape our world.
Copyright National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Join Director Kim Sajet as she chats with artists, historians, and thought leaders about the big and small ways that portraits shape our world.
Copyright National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
These portraits let the flora take the floor.
How a skinny layer of clay unlocked the mystery of a mass extinction.
T. rex is ready for its close-up.
A portrait, a taxidermy display, and the rise of the early conservation movement.
Much of what we know about Sojourner Truth is fiction.
Many of the men who worked on our elegant building probably never had a portrait taken, and some were not even paid.
"Carter was a man of fire and spirit. He did not live in a pastel world."
Former President Jimmy Carter is often portrayed with a wide grin, but that's just part of the picture.
"Everybody needs a Paris."
The presidents and their spouses leave their mark on the walls of the People's House.
These women took the first hammer swings at a glass ceiling in the shape of an oval.
The road to the White House before social media.
The portraits are just the stepping off point.
What happens if you ask AI to paint a self-portrait?
Rick Chapman has photographed a lot of Olympians. But for him, it's not about the medals.
Bidding On History
Devon Rodriguez has cracked the algorithm and slipped portraiture into your feed.
Modernism as a garden, and as a minefield.
A rare portrait of Abraham Lincoln re-emerges, with a story to tell.
There is an art to fitting masterpieces through poky passages.
The Changes In Our Change, From Sidedoor
Portraying Older Women's Bodies
A journalist draws a portrait of her world-famous ancestor.
"Everybody needs a Paris."
The National Mall is a great place to do art, but what should the art say?
A rare portrait of President Abraham Lincoln re-emerges... with a story to tell.
Devon Rodriguez has cracked the algorithm and slipped portraiture into your feed.
The Supreme Court rules on Andy Warhol silk screen, but what about the right to riff?
From the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast, a ledger book stuffed with silhouettes and sprinkled with arsenic.
We can control the way we are seen, but not the way we are consumed.
What happens if you ask AI to paint a self-portrait?
Art fraud is a lot more common than you might think.
Was he an American patriot, a communist sympathiser, or the destroyer of worlds?
The frame tells a story that the painting cannot.
This season we're changing things up..
Too mad, too manly, too serious, not serious enough..
The diagnosis is gender bias and historical amnesia.
If you don't want Ann to draw you, don't be a hypocrite.
Indra Nooyi is no longer blending in.
There's more to this story than meets the nose.
It's possibly the world's largest, and tiniest, portrait collection.
The award-winning chef José Andrés looks to a Civil War nurse for inspiration.
A map, a smile, a shadow of controversy.
Memory does not sit atop a granite foundation, nor does democracy.
The 'luxury of a likeness' is democratized.
It's definitely OK to be Takei!
How do you draw a picture of a world-famous ancestor?
"When you decide to become a warrior, you can expect a lot of arrows to be slung at you."
Stories of Resistance and Resilience
A boozy lunch, a big idea.
"For me history is not a noun, it's a verb."
"Pocahontas was a player."
Science, Sports and The Supremes
Who do we lionize, and why?
She literally wrote her way to freedom.
“Nothing can be so deceiving as a photograph.”
Two men who had their 'American-ness' challenged.
"Democracy is never a thing done."
What does our currency say about us?
A map, a smile, a shadow of controversy.
Real people, real stories
The songs, the portraits, and of course the gowns.
A million ways that hair is power.
A dash of cha-cha-cha, a shot of rhythm and blues, shake with ice.
A family crest with a pair of boxing gloves.
A portrait so meticulously rendered, "You can see my contact lenses."
Sojourner Truth's words were not always her own. But her image was.
In some ways, Elaine de Kooning almost fell in love with her subject. Then he was murdered.
A reporter becomes the subject of the story.
What if you could leave behind just one photograph?
Jumping in right before a knockout
Good Humor Makes Good Medicine
Real people, real stories
"A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez"
How did two women buck the Victorian era and become infamous Civil War spies?
Snapshots from an Interview
Righting a wrong with a painting.
The reserved woman who sang her way into civil rights history.
First Ladies, unelected and not going anywhere.
Why was this Native American heroine painted in a stiff lace collar?
When the National Portrait Gallery is your matchmaker..
"My job is to observe, and my job is to record. But my job is also to be a human."
Beyond Black And White
How do you portray someone who never sat for a portrait?
Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
Blink: A Flower Is Not Just A Flower
April 1, 20257min 52sec
This mini 'Blink' episode celebrates the cherry blossoms that are blooming all over Washington D.C. at the moment by taking a closer look at portraits that feature flowers. Kim visits three paintings in the National Portrait Gallery that use specific blooms to convey coded information about the sitter, including the experiences that shaped them and the roles they took on.
Sarah Weston Seaton with her Children, by Charles Bird King
Barack Obama, by Kehinde Wiley
George Washington Carver, by Betsy Graves Reyneau