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PORTRAITS

National Portrait Gallery

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
30hr 33min
Thumbnail for "Asteroid Strike".
How a skinny layer of clay unlocked the mystery of a mass extinction.
May 6, 202526min 14sec62.98 MB
Thumbnail for "How Do You Portray A Dinosaur?".
T. rex is ready for its close-up.
April 15, 202524min 38sec59.14 MB
Thumbnail for "Blink: A Flower Is Not Just A Flower".
These portraits let the flora take the floor.
April 1, 20257min 52sec18.89 MB
Thumbnail for "The Vanishing Bison".
A portrait, a taxidermy display, and the rise of the early conservation movement.
March 4, 202530min 58sec74.36 MB
Thumbnail for "Bonus: The Whole Truth".
Much of what we know about Sojourner Truth is fiction.
February 4, 202534min 30sec68.79 MB
Thumbnail for "Who Built This Place?".
Many of the men who worked on our elegant building probably never had a portrait taken, and some were not even paid.
January 21, 202524min 2sec57.71 MB
Thumbnail for "In Memoriam: Former President Jimmy Carter".
"Carter was a man of fire and spirit. He did not live in a pastel world."
January 9, 202521min 1sec50.46 MB
Thumbnail for "Blink: Carter's Smile".
Former President Jimmy Carter is often portrayed with a wide grin, but that's just part of the picture.
December 17, 20247min 16sec13.98 MB
Thumbnail for "From The Vault: Brilliant Exiles".
"Everybody needs a Paris."
December 3, 202427min 29sec52.8 MB
Thumbnail for "Sitting (Still) For History".
The presidents and their spouses leave their mark on the walls of the People's House.
November 19, 202423min 39sec45.44 MB
Thumbnail for "Women Who Dared".
These women took the first hammer swings at a glass ceiling in the shape of an oval.
November 5, 202426min 30sec50.9 MB
Thumbnail for "Campaigns Past: Cowboy Hats and Hard Cider".
The road to the White House before social media.
October 22, 202424min 40sec47.38 MB
Thumbnail for "Season 6 Trailer".
The portraits are just the stepping off point.
October 15, 20241min 43sec3.32 MB
Thumbnail for "From The Vault: ART-ificial Intelligence".
What happens if you ask AI to paint a self-portrait?
August 22, 202423min 54sec40.68 MB
Thumbnail for "Blink: First, Put The Camera Down".
Rick Chapman has photographed a lot of Olympians. But for him, it's not about the medals.
August 8, 20247min 1sec13.48 MB
Thumbnail for "Blink: First Photo Of A First Lady".
Bidding On History
August 1, 20246min 35sec12.66 MB
Thumbnail for "From the Vault: Social Media And The Subway".
Devon Rodriguez has cracked the algorithm and slipped portraiture into your feed.
July 18, 202420min 56sec40.27 MB
Thumbnail for "Blink: A Secret Language Of Flowers".
Modernism as a garden, and as a minefield.
July 4, 20245min 2sec9.7 MB
Thumbnail for "From The Vault: Lincoln Hiding In Plain Sight".
A rare portrait of Abraham Lincoln re-emerges, with a story to tell.
June 20, 202424min 37sec47.3 MB
Thumbnail for "Blink: Small Doors, Big Art".
There is an art to fitting masterpieces through poky passages.
June 6, 20244min 58sec9.56 MB
Thumbnail for "Bonus: Face Value".
The Changes In Our Change, From Sidedoor
May 23, 202432min 43sec55.42 MB
Thumbnail for "Hags and Witches".
Portraying Older Women's Bodies
April 9, 202421min 59sec42.26 MB
Thumbnail for "From The Vault: The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways".
A journalist draws a portrait of her world-famous ancestor.
March 26, 202427min 36sec52.94 MB
Thumbnail for "Brilliant Exiles".
"Everybody needs a Paris."
March 12, 202427min 29sec52.81 MB
Thumbnail for "Mall Art".
The National Mall is a great place to do art, but what should the art say?
February 27, 202424min 48sec47.66 MB
Thumbnail for "Lincoln Hiding In Plain Sight".
A rare portrait of President Abraham Lincoln re-emerges... with a story to tell.
February 13, 202424min 4sec46.24 MB
Thumbnail for "Social Media And The Subway".
Devon Rodriguez has cracked the algorithm and slipped portraiture into your feed.
January 30, 202420min 37sec29.71 MB
Thumbnail for "Copyright vs Copywrong".
The Supreme Court rules on Andy Warhol silk screen, but what about the right to riff?
January 16, 202425min 34sec36.84 MB
Thumbnail for "Bonus: The Toxic Book of Faces".
From the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast, a ledger book stuffed with silhouettes and sprinkled with arsenic.
January 2, 202433min 26sec64.14 MB
Thumbnail for "Me, Online".
We can control the way we are seen, but not the way we are consumed.
December 19, 202320min 39sec29.75 MB
Thumbnail for "ART-ificial Intelligence".
What happens if you ask AI to paint a self-portrait?
December 5, 202323min 51sec34.38 MB
Thumbnail for "Fakes, the Boxed Wines of the Art World".
Art fraud is a lot more common than you might think.
November 21, 202327min 29sec65.98 MB
Thumbnail for "Oppenheimer's Close-Up".
Was he an American patriot, a communist sympathiser, or the destroyer of worlds?
November 7, 202325min 14sec36.37 MB
Thumbnail for "It Depends How You Frame It".
The frame tells a story that the painting cannot.
October 24, 202323min 50sec57.25 MB
Thumbnail for "Season 5 Trailer: Director's Cut".
This season we're changing things up..
October 17, 20231min 43sec4.13 MB
Thumbnail for "A Cover Like No Other".
Too mad, too manly, too serious, not serious enough..
November 1, 202226min 12sec62.95 MB
Thumbnail for "BONUS: The Case of the Missing Portrait".
The diagnosis is gender bias and historical amnesia.
October 18, 202230min 6sec72.26 MB
Thumbnail for "Pinocchio Noses and Plug-In Halos".
If you don't want Ann to draw you, don't be a hypocrite.
October 4, 202226min 49sec64.38 MB
Thumbnail for "The Business End Of Portraiture".
Indra Nooyi is no longer blending in.
September 20, 202222min 55sec55.02 MB
Thumbnail for "BONUS: Finding Cleopatra".
There's more to this story than meets the nose.
September 6, 202227min 30sec52.83 MB
Thumbnail for "Postal Pairings".
It's possibly the world's largest, and tiniest, portrait collection.
August 23, 202222min 32sec54.11 MB
Thumbnail for "A Shortcut Across Time".
The award-winning chef José Andrés looks to a Civil War nurse for inspiration.
August 9, 202225min 40sec49.32 MB
Thumbnail for "BONUS: Portraying The Presidents".
A map, a smile, a shadow of controversy.
July 26, 202230min 29sec58.57 MB
Thumbnail for "Things We Take For Granted".
Memory does not sit atop a granite foundation, nor does democracy.
July 12, 202227min 18sec52.43 MB
Thumbnail for "Glimpsing Freedom".
The 'luxury of a likeness' is democratized.
June 28, 202224min 56sec47.91 MB
Thumbnail for "Live Long and Protest".
It's definitely OK to be Takei!
June 14, 202229min 13sec56.11 MB
Thumbnail for "The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways".
How do you draw a picture of a world-famous ancestor?
May 31, 202226min 49sec51.52 MB
Thumbnail for "Dolores Huerta: Yes She Did!".
"When you decide to become a warrior, you can expect a lot of arrows to be slung at you."
May 17, 202224min 49sec47.69 MB
Thumbnail for "Season 4 Trailer".
Stories of Resistance and Resilience
May 10, 20221min 50sec3.55 MB
Thumbnail for "Yesterday's Disruptors... Today".
A boozy lunch, a big idea.
August 17, 202125min 55sec49.77 MB
Thumbnail for "Un-forgetting History".
"For me history is not a noun, it's a verb."
July 27, 202127min 12sec52.25 MB
Thumbnail for "BONUS: Who Was Pocahontas Really?".
"Pocahontas was a player."
July 13, 202123min 35sec56.62 MB
Thumbnail for "Ellen Stofan Sees Stars Here On Earth".
Science, Sports and The Supremes
June 29, 202124min 28sec58.76 MB
Thumbnail for "People of Progress".
Who do we lionize, and why?
June 15, 202127min 22sec65.71 MB
Thumbnail for "Phillis Wheatley Redrawn".
She literally wrote her way to freedom.
June 1, 202122min 51sec43.9 MB
Thumbnail for "Capturing Ghosts".
“Nothing can be so deceiving as a photograph.”
May 18, 202126min 31sec50.93 MB
Thumbnail for "Hyphenated".
Two men who had their 'American-ness' challenged.
May 4, 202123min 58sec46.04 MB
Thumbnail for "Foundational Truths".
"Democracy is never a thing done."
April 20, 202121min 20sec41 MB
Thumbnail for "On the Money".
What does our currency say about us?
April 6, 202127min 6sec52.06 MB
Thumbnail for "Portraying The Presidents".
A map, a smile, a shadow of controversy.
March 23, 202129min 46sec57.2 MB
Thumbnail for "Season 3 Trailer".
Real people, real stories
March 9, 20212min 10sec4.19 MB
Thumbnail for "Holiday Edition: Renée Fleming on Music’s Special Place".
The songs, the portraits, and of course the gowns.
December 15, 202021min 24sec41.11 MB
Thumbnail for "Self Made with Elle Johnson and Janine Sherman Barrois ".
A million ways that hair is power.
August 4, 202022min 42sec32.71 MB
Thumbnail for "Bataan's Boogaloo with Eduardo Díaz".
A dash of cha-cha-cha, a shot of rhythm and blues, shake with ice.
July 21, 202016min 6sec23.21 MB
Thumbnail for "The Rockefeller Pose with LL Cool J and Richard Ormond".
A family crest with a pair of boxing gloves.
July 7, 202029min 2sec41.86 MB
Thumbnail for "Getting Real with Robert McCurdy".
A portrait so meticulously rendered, "You can see my contact lenses."
June 23, 202019min 24sec27.97 MB
Thumbnail for "Seeing Truth with Gwendolyn Shaw".
Sojourner Truth's words were not always her own. But her image was.
June 9, 202020min 23sec29.38 MB
Thumbnail for "Painting Through a President's Assassination, with Brandon Fortune".
In some ways, Elaine de Kooning almost fell in love with her subject. Then he was murdered.
May 26, 202021min 59sec31.68 MB
Thumbnail for "Focusing on Ruben Salazar, with Taína Caragol".
A reporter becomes the subject of the story.
May 12, 202013min 4sec18.82 MB
Thumbnail for "Growing Younger with Harriet Tubman".
What if you could leave behind just one photograph?
April 28, 202021min 13sec30.56 MB
Thumbnail for "Close Looking with Briana Zavadil White".
Jumping in right before a knockout
April 14, 202014min 36sec35.08 MB
Thumbnail for "Removing the Sting with Will Rogers".
Good Humor Makes Good Medicine
March 31, 202024min 58sec35.98 MB
Thumbnail for "Season 2 Trailer".
Real people, real stories
March 24, 20202min 15sec5.43 MB
Thumbnail for "Crossing the Border with Hugo Crosthwaite".
"A Portrait of Berenice Sarmiento Chávez"
November 5, 201921min 59sec31.69 MB
Thumbnail for "Civil War Spies with Ann Shumard".
How did two women buck the Victorian era and become infamous Civil War spies?
October 22, 201922min 45sec32.78 MB
Thumbnail for "In Memoriam: Cokie Roberts".
Snapshots from an Interview
October 8, 201913min 43sec19.77 MB
Thumbnail for "Speaking with the Secretary".
Righting a wrong with a painting.
September 24, 201924min 49sec35.75 MB
Thumbnail for "Remembering Marian Anderson with Leslie Ureña".
The reserved woman who sang her way into civil rights history.
September 10, 201922min31.7 MB
Thumbnail for "Firsts with Cokie Roberts".
First Ladies, unelected and not going anywhere.
August 27, 201923min 35sec33.98 MB
Thumbnail for "Discovering Pocahontas with Paul Chaat Smith".
Why was this Native American heroine painted in a stiff lace collar?
August 13, 201923min 4sec55.37 MB
Thumbnail for "Underwater with Julie Packard and Hope Gangloff".
When the National Portrait Gallery is your matchmaker..
July 30, 201920min 25sec29.42 MB
Thumbnail for "On the Beat with Wendy MacNaughton".
"My job is to observe, and my job is to record. But my job is also to be a human."
July 16, 201923min 27sec33.78 MB
Thumbnail for "Loving with Sheryll Cashin".
Beyond Black And White
July 2, 201922min 53sec32.98 MB
Thumbnail for "Lopsided with Jill Lepore".
How do you portray someone who never sat for a portrait?
June 17, 201921min 17sec30.65 MB
Thumbnail for "Coming Soon: Portraits".
Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
June 4, 20191min 57sec2.81 MB

Asteroid Strike

Thumbnail for "Asteroid Strike".
May 6, 202526min 14sec

Geologist Walter Alvarez was working away on some limestone samples in Gubbio, Italy, when he became intrigued by an odd layer of rock. He was looking at the K-T boundary. Underneath it, there are dinosaur fossils. Above it, there are none. And Walter was about to stumble on the reason why.

In this final episode of our science series, we pair a rock sample from the K-T boundary with a unique portrait by Carmen Lomas Garza to tell the story of the dinosaur extinction -- how it happened, why it happened, and who figured it out.

With Kirk Johnson, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and Taína Caragol, curator of painting and sculpture and Latino art and history at the National Portrait Gallery.

See the portraits we discussed:

Walter Alvarez, by Carmen Lomas Garza

Luis Alvarez, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Thumbnail for "Asteroid Strike".
Asteroid Strike
00:00
26:14