National Portrait Gallery USA

06/05/2026

Today we celebrate with this beautiful painting of George Washington Carver tending to some red and white amaryllis flowers. 🌺

Carver was the leading African American agricultural scientist of the 20th century. He brought a conservationist approach to his field.

He first encountered the blossoming conservation movement as a student at Iowa Agricultural College. His reverence of nature and appreciation for the “mutual relationship of the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms” was also equally shaped by his deeply held Christian beliefs.

Carver led the Agricultural Department at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute for forty-seven years, from 1896 to 1943. During his tenure, he emphasized the importance of sustainability, compost fertilizers, and crop rotation. He wrote, “Wherever the soil is wasted, the people are wasted. A poor soil produces only a poor people—poor economically, poor spiritually and intellectually, poor physically.”
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🖼️: “George Washington Carver” by Betsy Graves Reyneau, 1942. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum; gift of the George Washington Carver Memorial Committee to the Smithsonian Institution, 1944. © Peter Edward Fayard

06/04/2026

06/03/2026

Dancer, actress, and civil rights activist Josephine Baker was born in 1906. 🎂

She rose to fame as an expatriate in Europe after moving to France at the age of nineteen. Baker grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and began her career by performing in vaudeville showcases around the country. In 1925, she was offered a chance to perform in Paris in the Harlem music and dance ensemble La R***e N***e in 1925.

During WW2, she served as a member of the French Resistance forces, smuggling messages in her lyrics that were sent back to France from opposing forces. She received France's military decoration, the Croix de Guerre, for her efforts.

Baker later returned to the United States to take part in the Civil Rights Movement. She was the only female speaker at the March on Washington in 1963, where she honored women civil rights activists.
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📸: Josephine Baker (detail) by Gimbal (Copy After: Armando Hernandez), c. 1951. Print. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.)

06/02/2026

Frances Folsom Cleveland became the first lady in 1886.

Almost overnight, the young and fashionable bride became an icon. As the first presidential couple to get married in the White House, the media coverage of her wedding to President Grover Cleveland stirred romantic sentiments among many Americans. No other first lady had been a celebrity before Frances Cleveland. Her clothing choices were copied, and her likeness was used in countless advertisements.

This elegant portrait of Frances Cleveland by Swedish artist Anders Zorn shows the former first lady at age thirty-five, at the couple’s home in Princeton, New Jersey. She wears one of her signature looks: a lace-ruffled gown revealing her bare shoulders and arms.

Image Credits
1. Frances Folsom Cleveland (detail) by Anders Leonard Zorn, 1899. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Frances Payne.
2. Frances Folsom Cleveland by Anders Leonard Zorn, 1899. Print. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Frances Payne.

06/01/2026

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

Born in Harlem in 1924, James Baldwin became one of the most influential writers and voices of the 20th century. ⁣Through essays, novels, and plays, Baldwin explored race, identity, love, and the realities of American life with unmatched honesty and insight.

Although he spent much of his adult life in France, Baldwin became one of the most powerful literary voices on race in America, helping shape conversations around civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. Following the publication of one of his most known books "The Fire Next Time" in 1963, magazine featured this cover portrait of Baldwin, recognizing his powerful writing on the realities of American racism.

Baldwin’s writing also explored sexuality. He believed sexuality was fluid and should not be divided into strict categories. His groundbreaking novel "Giovanni’s Room" (1956) follows the relationships and inner struggles of a bisexual American man living in Paris.

From "Go Tell It on the Mountain" to "Notes of a Native Son," Baldwin’s work continues to inspire conversations around civil rights, q***r identity, and freedom today.

🖼️ James Baldwin by Boris Chaliapin. Painting, 1963. Copyright Chris Murphy. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Time magazine.

06/01/2026

Happy 100th birthday to Marilyn Monroe! 🥳

Originally known as Norma Jean Mortenson, the movie star was born in 1926 in Los Angeles, California. These iconic, midair photographs are from 1959, for Life.com magazine's November 9th edition of that year, which featured a portfolio of Philippe Halsman's celebrity jump photos.

Halsman was interested in psychoanalysis, and as a photographer, he was always trying to capture his subject's innermost spirit. He discovered that when his subjects jumped, their masks fell, and their true personalities were revealed.

At the end of the shoot, on the last frame of film, he would ask his subjects if they would jump for him. He called this hobby he had: "Jumpology," and published a book of these photos in 1959. These would be the last photos he took of Marilyn. Of her jump, he wrote that it showed her childlike playfulness. 💛

(Image Credits)
1. "Marilyn Jumping" by Philippe Halsman, 1959 (printed 1981). National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of George R. Rinhart. © Philippe Halsman Archive
2. "Marilyn Monroe" by Philippe Halsman, 1959. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Courtesy of © Philippe Halsman Archive
3. magazine's November 9, 1959 cover
4. "Marilyn Monroe" by Philippe Halsman, 1959. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of George R. Rinhart. © Philippe Halsman Archive

05/31/2026

"The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity—nothing is better than simplicity." 🕊️

Born in Long Island, NY, in 1819, Walt Whitman became one of America’s most influential poets. Best known for his groundbreaking collection, "Leaves of Grass," Whitman began writing the work in the 1850s and continued revising and expanding it throughout his life.

His poetry celebrated the beauty, diversity, and spirit of America and its people, exploring themes of nature, love, democracy, and humanity. Whitman’s innovative use of free verse and everyday language transformed modern poetry and challenged traditional writing styles of his time.

Although he spent much of his career working as a journalist and government bureaucrat, Whitman gained a devoted following for poetry that embraced vernacular language and boldly explored subjects others avoided. Today, he is remembered as a literary pioneer whose voice continues to shape American literature.

📸: "Walt Whitman" by G. Frank E. Pearsall. Photograph, 1872. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Feinberg.

05/30/2026

Born in London to Bengali parents, Jhumpa Lahiri moved to Rhode Island at the age of two. She has said that while growing up, she did not feel fully at home in the United States or in India: “At many times in my life, I wished I could be like any other American . . . feel really a part of it, really woven into it. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it. And all of my writing has come out of that.”

As an adult, Lahiri earned three master’s degrees and a doctorate before pursuing a literary career. Shortly thereafter, she became a voice of the South Asian immigrant experience in the United States and won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/ Hemingway Award for her debut short-story collection, “The Interpreter of Maladies” (1999). Lahiri’s novel, “The Lowlands” (2013), was a bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award.

📸: “Jhumpa Lahiri” by Raymond Elman, 2012. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the artist. © Raymond Elman

05/28/2026

John Steinbeck’s first commercially successful novel, Tortilla Flat, was published in 1935, the same year that James Fitzgerald created this portrait of the author. ✍️

Although he was a great contributor to American literature, John Steinbeck retreated from fame. Steinbeck claimed to be “scared to death of popularity,” saying, “it has ruined everyone I know.” Fitzgerald expresses Steinbeck’s reclusive personality by casting half of the author’s face in dark shadow.

In the 1930s and 1940s, both Steinbeck and Fitzgerald belonged to a loosely organized group of artists, writers, and intellectuals in Monterey, California. Although they often argued violently, both men respected each other’s talent and shied away from public recognition.

Steinbeck’s famed novels, "Of Mice and Men" (1937) and "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939), earned him even more acclaim, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

✏️ : “John Steinbeck” by James Fitzgerald, 1935. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Edgar F. Hubert. © The James Fitzgerald Legacy Monhegan Museum of Art & History.

05/27/2026

Illustrator Joseph Grant, who spent much of his career as an animator for Walt Disney Studios, created this portrait of Anna May Wong in 1932. A legendary Asian American actress, Wong began her career in Hollywood’s silent era, appearing in small parts in films such as “The Red Lantern” (1919) and “The Thief of Bagdad” (1924). ⁣
She successfully made the transition into talking pictures, and her role opposite Marlene Dietrich in “Shanghai Express” (1932) made her an international star. As an Asian American, few roles were available to her from the major studios; the most crushing blow came in 1935, when Austrian Luise Rainer was selected to star as the Chinese character O-Lan in the movie adaptation of Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth.”⁣
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Her Hollywood career in the late 1930s was relegated to B pictures, and she went into semi-retirement in 1943. ⁣
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✏️: “Anna May Wong” (detail) by Joseph Grant, 1932. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Caroline Grubb and Jennifer Grant Castrup © National Portrait Gallery