PORTRAITS
Episodes
Asteroid Strike
06 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
How Do You Portray A Dinosaur?
15 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We have portraits of people in our galleries. But what if you’re a natural science museum? How do you portray a dinosaur? We talk with Kirk Johnson...
Blink: A Flower Is Not Just A Flower
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Vanishing Bison
04 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When William Temple Hornaday's exhibition of stuffed bison went on display at the Smithsonian Institution in 1888, it caused a sensation. Most visitor...
Bonus: The Whole Truth
04 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
From the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast: sorting fact from fiction to find the real Sojourner Truth.As a prominent woman's rights activist and aboliti...
Who Built This Place?
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We follow a paper trail back in time to learn about the laborers -- some of them enslaved -- who put their backs into the graceful old building that n...
In Memoriam: Former President Jimmy Carter
09 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We remember former President Jimmy Carter through a slightly different lens-- through the eyes of a longtime friend and through the portraits of Carte...
Blink: Carter's Smile
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this mini 'Blink' episode, Kim asks political aide Jack Watson for his thoughts on a couple of Time magazine covers featuring his old boss, former ...
From The Vault: Brilliant Exiles
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paris in the early 1900s was a magnet for convention-defying American women. It offered a delicious taste of freedom, which they used to explode the g...
Sitting (Still) For History
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every time a president leaves office they're asked to do something that might not come naturally-- sit still, be quiet and surrender to someone else's...
Women Who Dared
05 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1872, decades before women were legally allowed to vote, Victoria Woodhull made an audacious run for the White House. The press ridiculed her stanc...
Campaigns Past: Cowboy Hats and Hard Cider
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With Election Day just around the corner, we go back in time to figure out how early presidential candidates got their message, and their image, in fr...
Season 6 Trailer
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We're back! Season six of PORTRAITS hits your feed Oct. 22 with a new slate of shows that use artwork to decode our world. Kim Sajet, director of the ...
From The Vault: ART-ificial Intelligence
22 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As AI art gets more and more sophisticated, how do we tell the difference between a portrait that’s created by a human being – with a soul – and...
Blink: First, Put The Camera Down
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this mini episode from our 'Blink' series, Rick Chapman shares stories from photographing elite athletes who have competed in the Olympic Games. Th...
Blink: First Photo Of A First Lady
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dolley Madison was eight years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and 40 when her husband James became president. In her late 70s sh...
From the Vault: Social Media And The Subway
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are not many portrait artists who get recognized on the street, but it happens to Devon Rodriguez all the time.After quietly honing his skill fo...
Blink: A Secret Language Of Flowers
04 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Next in our 'Blink' summer series, Kim speaks with Robyn Asleson, curator of the 'Brilliant Exiles' exhibition, about a dreamy painting that holds a s...
From The Vault: Lincoln Hiding In Plain Sight
20 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A globe turned to Haiti. A glove on the ground. This life-size portrait of President Abraham Lincoln contains intriguing details that can be read as a...
Blink: Small Doors, Big Art
06 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our 'Blink' summer series, Kim takes listeners behind the scenes for a quick glimpse at some of the goings-on at the National Portrait Gallery. Thi...
Bonus: Face Value
23 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the Smithsonian's Sidedoor podcast, we bring you a special episode about the tiny new portraits appearing in our pockets and purses. The faces on...
Hags and Witches
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kiki Smith says she didn’t really start making drawings of people until she was 40. Once she had aged a little, she looked in the mirror and saw lin...
From The Vault: The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We didn’t want to let Women’s History Month pass without a tip of the hat to one of the towering figures we’ve featured here on PORTRAITS. Dr. ...
Brilliant Exiles
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paris in the early 1900s was a magnet for convention-defying American women. It offered a delicious taste of freedom, which they used to explode the g...
Mall Art
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The National Mall is a great canvas, in part because of all the history embedded there. It’s been a place of protest, celebration and mourning. It a...
Lincoln Hiding In Plain Sight
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A globe turned to Haiti. A glove on the ground. A life-size portrait of President Abraham Lincoln contains intriguing details that can be read as a fr...
Social Media And The Subway
30 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There are not many portrait artists who get recognized on the street, but it happens to Devon Rodriguez all the time. After quietly honing his skill ...
Copyright vs Copywrong
16 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Copyright law is complicated, especially when it comes to visual art. So there was a lot of fanfare around the Supreme Court’s May ruling involving ...
Bonus: The Toxic Book of Faces
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Silhouettes were a hugely popular and democratic form of portraiture in the 19th century. So an old ledger book full of cut paper profiles at the Nati...
Me, Online
19 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Digital artist Amalia Soto, also known by the username Molly Soda, wants to show us how we portray ourselves, or perform ourselves, online. She says t...
ART-ificial Intelligence
05 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As AI art gets more and more sophisticated, how do we tell the difference between a portrait that’s created by a human being – with a soul – and...
Fakes, the Boxed Wines of the Art World
21 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
That glass of fine wine you’re enjoying so much.. What if you were told it came from a box? Would it taste different? According to art fraud invest...
Oppenheimer's Close-Up
07 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The blockbuster Oppenheimer movie focuses on two portrayals of J. Robert Oppenheimer. One is the famous physicist known as the architect of the atomic...
It Depends How You Frame It
24 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Museum director Kim Sajet takes listeners to stand in front of a portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, the revered commander who led the Union Army to victory...
Season 5 Trailer: Director's Cut
17 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Season five kicks off Oct. 24, as director Kim Sajet takes listeners into the National Portrait Gallery to stand in front of some of her favorite artw...
A Cover Like No Other
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, she wanted a cover image that would break completely with the norms of the day. There would be no high-en...
BONUS: The Case of the Missing Portrait
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Dorothy Andersen solved a vexing medical mystery by identifying cystic fibrosis. But the mystery of her missing portrait remained unsolved. This ...
Pinocchio Noses and Plug-In Halos
04 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Washington Post editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes says her profession serves as a canary in the coalmine for freedom of expression, a kind of oxygen m...
The Business End Of Portraiture
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Indra Nooyi grew up in a conservative Brahmin household in India, but that didn’t stop her from playing cricket with her brother’s friends, or fro...
BONUS: Finding Cleopatra
06 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From our fellow Smithsonian podcast, Sidedoor, the story of Edmonia Lewis— the first sculptor of African American and Native American (Mississauga)...
Postal Pairings
23 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before cable news and email and Twitter, it was the postal service that transmitted ideas and information across land, sea, and political divides. Kim...
A Shortcut Across Time
09 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
José Andrés is the Michelin-starred chef known for jumping into action to feed people affected by hurricanes, wildfires, and most recently the war i...
BONUS: Portraying The Presidents
26 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The House committee investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has generated a lot of interest in one of the National Portrait Gallery’s la...
Things We Take For Granted
12 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Atlantic editor Vann R. Newkirk II talks to Kim about the mutability of memory, as seen through two portraits of the abolitionist John Brown. He also ...
Glimpsing Freedom
28 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Photography and the Civil War crashed into one another, making it affordable for soldiers to have their picture taken before going off to war. What Bl...
Live Long and Protest
14 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
George Takei went boldly where no man had gone before when he broke racial stereotypes to play Mr. Sulu on Star Trek. But he's also lent his celebrity...
The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways
31 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu was a towering figure in science whose parity experiment shattered our understanding of the physical world. She enjoyed rockstar s...
Dolores Huerta: Yes She Did!
17 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Grassroots organizer Dolores Huerta talks to Kim about her first encounter with the deep poverty of California farmworkers in the 1950s, and how she t...
Season 4 Trailer
10 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, examines the stories of people who say “No” to the status quo. Guests this season include Do...
Yesterday's Disruptors... Today
17 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Since it was founded over a long lunch in Boston in 1857, The Atlantic has featured presidents and poets, abolitionists and suffragists— men and wom...
Un-forgetting History
27 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
After having to destroy her family pictures during the Cultural Revolution in China, artist Hung Liu treasures old photographs all the more. In fact, ...
BONUS: Who Was Pocahontas Really?
13 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
These last few weeks brought jolting discoveries at residential schools in Canada— unmarked grave sites thought to contain the remains of hundreds o...
Ellen Stofan Sees Stars Here On Earth
29 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ellen Stofan is a planetary geologist who has spent a lot of time looking up at the stars and thinking about life outside our planet. But in this ...
People of Progress
15 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The 1862 painting "Men of Progress" depicts a group of inventors credited with "altering the course of contemporary civilization.” Between them, the...
Phillis Wheatley Redrawn
01 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Phillis Wheatley was a literary superstar around the time of the American Revolutionary War— a distinction she notched up while writing in bondage. ...
Capturing Ghosts
18 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the early photographer William Mumler developed his glass plates, he sometimes found a ghost had slipped into the picture. Was he a fraud? A medi...
Hyphenated
04 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Choreographer-in-Residence Dana Tai Soon Burgess traces his ‘hyphenated’ background— a journey that begins on a boat from Korea, disembarks at a...
Foundational Truths
20 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Author Rick Atkinson brings to life two men who played outsized roles during the founding of the United States— one a rich slave trader, the other a...
On the Money
06 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We look at the portraits on our money— the little history lessons we carry around in our pockets. But with such a limited array of people featured, ...
Portraying The Presidents
23 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As the National Portrait Gallery works on its latest commission -- an official portrait of former President Donald Trump -- we take a spin through ...
Season 3 Trailer
09 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery, draws back the curtain on the artwork that tells the story of the United States— from a presid...
Holiday Edition: Renée Fleming on Music’s Special Place
15 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Operatic soprano Renée Fleming has been called ‘the people’s diva,’ performing at key moments in our nation’s story, like when she sang at gr...
Self Made with Elle Johnson and Janine Sherman Barrois
04 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Born just two years after the abolition of slavery, Madam C.J. Walker built a business empire by marketing her homemade haircare formula to the black ...
Bataan's Boogaloo with Eduardo Díaz
21 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We look at a black and white photograph that encapsulates a very American story— about the magic that can happen when you throw together people from...
The Rockefeller Pose with LL Cool J and Richard Ormond
07 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The sitter was rapper LL Cool J. The artist was Kehinde Wiley, who's made a name for himself by portraying African American men and women in regal p...
Getting Real with Robert McCurdy
23 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As a portrait artist, Robert McCurdy has painted some of the most famous and visionary people of our time-- the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Toni Morri...
Seeing Truth with Gwendolyn Shaw
09 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After 'walking away' from slavery, abolitionist Sojourner Truth chose her own name, told her own story at speaking engagements, and sued for her young...
Painting Through a President's Assassination, with Brandon Fortune
26 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It commands attention among the more sober portraits in the Presidents’ gallery, interrupting a room of men in dark suits with an explosion of green...
Focusing on Ruben Salazar, with Taína Caragol
12 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ruben Salazar was one of the first Latinx journalists to rise through the ranks of a major U.S. newspaper. Initially, he was careful to avoid being pi...
Growing Younger with Harriet Tubman
28 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and film director Kasi Lemmons love Harriet Tubman, but they weren't in love with her portrait as an older woman in...
Close Looking with Briana Zavadil White
14 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the first of our ‘social distancing’ episodes, educator Briana Zavadil White takes us to stand in front of one of her favorite paintings at the...
Removing the Sting with Will Rogers
31 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Coronavirus upended our lives, Will Rogers saw the United States through another difficult and divisive time. The good-humored cowboy is p...
Season 2 Trailer
24 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why was it so startling to find a photograph of Harriet Tubman as a young woman? Why did Elaine de Kooning stop painting after the assassination of Jo...
Crossing the Border with Hugo Crosthwaite
05 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Hugo Crosthwaite, winner of the 2019 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, traces his artistic influences to his parents' curio shop in Tijuana, wher...
Civil War Spies with Ann Shumard
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ann Shumard, the Gallery's senior curator of photographs, narrates the stories of Rose O'Neal Greenhow and Belle Boyd-- Civil War spies whose images w...
In Memoriam: Cokie Roberts
08 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It wasn’t long after Cokie Roberts came on Portraits that we learned the sad news of her passing, on Sept. 17. We quickly realized we has a ton of g...
Speaking with the Secretary
24 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch says a portrait can restore humanity, as in the case of Henrietta Lacks. She's the woman whose '...
Remembering Marian Anderson with Leslie Ureña
10 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Classical vocalist Marian Anderson became a civil rights icon in 1939 when she sang before 75,000 spectators at the Lincoln Memorial — a concert org...
Firsts with Cokie Roberts
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist Cokie Roberts laments the fact that Martha Washington’s portrait depicts her as an old lady. Perhaps if it had been painted sooner, when ...
Discovering Pocahontas with Paul Chaat Smith
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If the 1995 animated Disney film is your guide, Pocahontas was a free-spirited Native American heroine who sang to the wind. So why is she dressed lik...
Underwater with Julie Packard and Hope Gangloff
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Julie Packard is a leading ocean conservationist, so when the National Portrait Gallery approached her to sit for a portrait, she had one request: She...
On the Beat with Wendy MacNaughton
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
You might see her leaning against a building on the street, or sitting across from you on your morning commute, pad in hand. Or, you might not have no...
Loving with Sheryll Cashin
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When author Sheryll Cashin looks at a photograph of Mildred Loving, she doesn't just see a woman who went to the Supreme Court to strike down a ban on...
Lopsided with Jill Lepore
17 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you were a man with property in the 19th century, there's a good chance you sat for a portrait at some point. If you were an enslaved person, a Nat...
Coming Soon: Portraits
04 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, launching on June 18, 2019. Join Director...