National Portrait Gallery | Face to Face blog

Closing Exhibition: Herblock’s Presidents

The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition “Herblock’s Presidents: ‘Puncturing Pomposity’” is closing soon, so see it while you can. The exhibition’s final day is this Sunday, November 30. 

The political cartoons of Herbert Block (1909–2001) appeared in American newspapers for more than seven decades under the pen name Herblock. He achieved his greatest prominence as the editorial cartoonist of the Washington Post, where he worked from 1946 until his death in 2001. The exhibition contains Block's original drawings of presidential cartoons from Franklin Roosevelt through Bill Clinton.

In this blog post, the National Portrait Gallery’s Warren Perry interviews Sidney Hart, curator of the exhibition. Hart is the NPG’s senior historian. The interview is excerpted below:

WP: Do you have a favorite one or two cartoons in the exhibition?

SH: There are three or four that we have that he did on Nixon and Watergate. I don’t know how many he did on Watergate, there may be twenty, thirty, forty or more. Block, in a sense, was waiting decades for the Watergate crisis. In his view, he had finally caught Nixon for what—as Block perceived it—Nixon really was.

And we have the cartoon, that we used as a signature cartoon for the exhibition, with a bloodhound—this is Block and his use of metaphor, the bloodhound is representing justice, or the law going after criminal activity.  And the bloodhound, which is huge, is following this little figure of Richard Nixon. And Nixon has audiotapes in his hand, representing the tapes from the Oval Office.

Many of the tapes discussed Nixon’s attempt to deal with the Watergate crisis, which were incriminating in the sense of Nixon trying to cover-up the original Watergate break-in. And Nixon had already thrown these bones to the bloodhound, and the bones each have the name of a White House aide who had been forced to resign. So Nixon had given up these bones, or aides, in order to save himself. And then he’s trying to throw some of the tapes to the bloodhound to get him off the track, so he can somehow escape this crisis. But of course the bloodhound is on his trail and is relentless.

WP: Among the Block cartoons, you can see how they are divided up into some that are blatantly targeting faults he finds inside administrations. Then there are others that are just funny, for the sake of poking fun at politics—which is one of the great American pasttimes. Which couple do you think are among the funniest?

SH: There’s one of Jimmy Carter, and it has to do with the economic crisis. This is interesting in a sense, because some people have tried to make comparisons between that economic crisis and our financial crisis today. At this point, thank goodness, that crisis is still worse, and maybe our crisis won’t reach that level.

We’re talking about a situation which unemployment, I think, was as high as ten percent—it was double-digit. Inflation was at least 12 percent; interest rates were over more than 20 percent. And we had what we call “stagflation,” in which you had inflation and the economy was not growing. It was a bad economic situation that had begun during the Nixon years and continued really to the early 1980s.

And Block has Jimmy Carter—it’s a hospital scene—and Carter is looking at this chart, and the sick patient is the economy. And the caption is something to effect of “frankly I have no idea what I’m doing.” And seeing that caption, I think you just laugh out loud. Because it’s a pathetic Jimmy Carter—maybe a trifle unfair, since nobody really had a clue what to do with economy. But Block was concerned about going after the biggest guy on the block, and the biggest guy on the block was often the president.

The other cartoon, and I can’t remember the caption, but again it’s the economy, and this is Gerald Ford. And they’re in this handbasket, and they’re heading downward, and it’s the economy. It’s a perfect depiction of “to hell in a handbasket.” Nobody knows really what’s going on with the economy. Ford has tried various gimmicks and nothing is working.

I remember looking at both those cartoons—the Carter one and the Ford one. And they’re not particularly vicious in any way. Block had done far more violent cartoons. You just see the captions—I was working with a graduate student who was assisting me in terms of selecting these—and we both saw these cartoons and just started laughing. They were just funny.

Listen to the entire interview with historian Sid Hart (14:54)

"Look—Nice Tapes—Okay, Boy? Okay?"/Herbert Lawrence Block,October 24, 1973/Pencil on paper Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C./ © The Herb Block Foundation

"I'm Going To Give It To You Straight—I Don't Have Any Idea What I'm Doing."/Herbert Lawrence Block, April 27, 1979/Pencil on paper/Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C./© The Herb Block Foundation

"We're Moving Right Along."/Herbert Lawrence Block, November 1, 1974/Pencil on paper/Herbert L. Block Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C./© The Herb Block Foundation

John F. Kennedy Remembered: May 29, 1917 — November 22, 1963

The murder of John F. Kennedy forty-five years ago this week is one of the most tragic and memorable events in American history. Biographer Robert Dallek writes, “Kennedy’s death shocked the country more than any other event since the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. . . . Kennedy’s sudden violent death seemed to deprive the country and the world of a better future.”

The National Portrait Gallery has several portraits of Kennedy in its collections—this 1963 portrait was painted by artist Elaine de Kooning, and is on view in the "America’s Presidents" exhibition.

Although Kennedy was only slightly less than three years into his presidency when he was killed, the images of his administration have great resonance. Most Americans are familiar with at least a handful of those iconic moments—the youthful Kennedy being sworn into the presidency, the chief executive at work as John Jr. plays beneath the desk, the silhouette in the window of the Oval Office, the horrible and searing moments of the drive through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Kennedy’s tenure in office includes honor as well as debacle. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine during the Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the defining moment of his foreign policy, while the Bay of Pigs invasion always evokes the same word: fiasco. However, such institutions as the Peace Corps and the space program continue to represent his legacy. The Kennedy presidency is also defined by his commitment to America and by the commitment he wished Americans to make to their country; the summation of his inaugural speech is among the most-quoted passages in our written and spoken heritage.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility; I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it, and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy/ Elaine de Kooning,1963/ Oil on canvas/ National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution/ © Elaine de Kooning Trust

Student Responses: Veronica Lake

This column is part of an occasional series in which Washington-area university students discuss works on display in the National Portrait Gallery.

This article is written by Maria B. Havrilla, a freshman at Catholic University of America. She writes about this 1940s “stand-up” poster of actress Veronica Lake—an advertisement for “Woodbury Matched Make-up” that was designed for drugstore windows. The poster is on display in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture,” on the museum’s second floor. 

My visit to the National Portrait Gallery was for a school project; I was instructed to choose a portrait I felt was significant and to discuss that portrait. Browsing through the Portrait Gallery, I found what I thought was the perfect portrait: the 1945 “Woodbury Matched Make-up” ad featuring Veronica Lake. Lake seems to display a calm seductiveness that is still sought-after in today’s commercial media. She broke some boundaries with her portrait, yet she still characterizes women of both yesterday and today.

Lake is the epitome of beauty and grace in this portrait; she draws the viewer in with her seductive and secretive stare. Her dress further hints at her sex appeal, and her complexion is flawless. Her looks are those of a good hometown girl with a flirtatious love of pushing the limits, while the blond locks framing her face give the illusion that her look is effortless. Veronica Lake depicts the ever-evolving modern woman.

Throughout history, portraits and paintings of women reflect the times. Portraits also bear some influence on the future. Women in such images as the Mona Lisa are shown to be worthy of attention and affection as well as admiration; they should not just be seen as mothers and wives. Something similar can be said for Veronica Lake; she made history by letting her hair fall about her face and by daring to show her pretty skin.

This image, from the period just after World War II, is a picture of a classic beauty who is showing her sensuous side, something not typical or always accepted for that day. Taking the standards of beauty and grace to another level, she says to the viewer that women should be confident and prepared to step out of tradition and into a bold new sensuality. Veronica Lake was an icon of her time and continues to be a legendary icon for breaking the norm, pushing women to become more interested in non-traditional roles in society.

“Woodbury Matched Make-Up” /Veronica Lake/Unidentified artist, c. 1945/Color photolithographic halftone poster stand-up/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

145 Years Ago Today at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . . can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.

We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . . we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . . and that government of the people. . .by the people. . .for the people. . . shall not perish from the earth.

- President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863

For more on Lincoln, visit “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln” at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs until July 5, 2009, and is part of a yearlong Smithsonian-wide celebration of the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. 

Abraham Lincoln /Mathew Brady, 1864/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Portrait of George C. Marshall by Thomas Edgar Stephens

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG Director Martin Sullivan discussed this portrait of George C. Marshall by artist Thomas Edgar Stephens. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

George C. Marshall was, according to one expert observer, the “perfect” soldier. Endowed with a quick mind, a good memory, and a superb sense of strategy, he did not particularly relish war. Yet as chief of staff during World War II, he proved to be a masterful orchestrator of military mobilization. In 1945 President Harry Truman remarked that millions of Americans had served the country well in that conflict, but it had been Marshall who “gave it victory.”

As capable in peace as in wartime, Marshall later became Truman's secretary of state, and it was he who unveiled in 1947 the American aid program for rebuilding Europe’s war-ravaged economies. Ultimately named the Marshall Plan, this venture became one of the greatest triumphs in the entire history of American diplomacy.

Listen to Martin Sullivan’s Face-to-Face talk on George C. Marshall (34:41)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, November 20, when Francis Flavin speaks about Henry Inman’s portrait of Sequoyah. 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.

George Catlett Marshall/Thomas Edgar Stephens, c 1949/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; transfer from the National Gallery of Art; gift of Ailsa Mellon Bruce, 1951

Student Responses: Loïe Fuller

This column begins an occasional series in which Washington-area university students discuss works on display in the National Portrait Gallery.

This article is written by Abbey Stickney, a graphic design student at George Mason University. She writes about this 1893 poster of performer Loïe Fuller by French artist Jules Chéret. The poster is on display in the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture,” on the museum’s second floor.

Stickney’s article is reprinted here, with her permission—it was originally published in Writing for Designers, the class blog of GMU’s graphic design course AVT 395-4. Writing for Designers covers many topics in graphic design, and includes more student-written articles about the “Ballyhoo!” exhibition.

As a graphic designer, I found the “Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery very worthwhile. It gave credibility to design as an art form, as the show was surrounded by the elaborate oil paintings of famous musicians, presidents, and just plain wealthy people. To have posters displayed in such close proximity to these wonderful works of art makes the general public really look at design, possibly for the first time. It makes these people notice the composition, the color choices, and the mood of the piece as they would a painting by Rembrandt.

Among the vast array of posters on display, one in particular grabbed my attention. Maybe it was the simplicity of the composition, or maybe it was the woman herself. The poster was a celebration of life and color set against the black background of a stage curtain. The wild red hair of the pale woman was thrown back, and she was draped in a sheer golden gown. One of her legs was kicked up, and she appeared to be suspended in the air with her dress floating in circles around her, as if she has just completed a spin in the air and is now returning to earth.

The woman’s name was Loïe Fuller, and she was an American performer who was quite popular in Paris around the turn of the century. Fuller was a master showman who pioneered the use of colored stage lighting and used enormous silk costumes to exaggerate her movements on stage. She characterizes the art nouveau movement, as her flowing costumes appeared on stage like flowers and other objects found in nature. Fuller was also the first person to bring modern dance to Europe and present it as a true art form.

I feel this poster has captured the essence of Fuller’s performances. She appears here free and full of life, just like her performances were, I would imagine. You can even faintly see the colored stage lighting in the background. The only text on the poster is the name of the performer, La  Loïe Fuller (at the top), and the place where she will be performing, the Folies-Bergère (at the bottom), a Paris opera house where nudity was not uncommon. The text type is red and has an organic feel to it that coordinates well with the image. With its rough, cut-out look, it appears to be handmade.

I think that it is very appropriate that this poster show was in a portrait gallery. Posters give the viewer more information than other portraits do: they tell the viewer not only about the person or people shown, but about the time in which the poster was created, the poster’s intended audience, and even the location in which the poster was to be displayed. This proves that not only are posters—and consequently graphic design as a whole—art, they are a seamless balancing act between both giving the viewer information and giving the viewer something that he or she wants to stop and look at. That is what good design does.

"Folies-Bergère La Loïe Fuller"/Loïe Fuller/Jules Chéret, 1893/Color lithographic poster/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Anne Sexton’s Awful Rowing Toward Self-annihilation

                         © Rollie McKenna

Anne Sexton loved applause and hated herself. The cloak of confessional poetry was wrapped about this personality skeleton not just for Anne Sexton, but also for many of her contemporaries. Among Sexton’s published collections are To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960), Live or Die (1966), and The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975).

This 1961 portrait of Sexton, by photographer Rollie McKenna, is on view at the National Portrait Gallery, in the recently opened exhibition “Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs.”   

The confessional movement arrived in the mid-1950s and in its number we count some of the great voices of the twentieth century—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, W. D. Snodgrass, and Anne Sexton. Called “confessional” because the movement emphasized cathartic discourse, Sexton and Plath placed their fragile emotional conditions on the block from the beginning, and in their respective words there seemed to exist a race conducted to see who could die first. When Plath finally succumbed to stove gas in February of 1963, Sexton wrote:

(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about raising potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief!—
how did you crawl into,
crawl down into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long…

In Oedipus Anne, Diane Hume-George writes, “I feel I am overhearing a pathetic competition between suicides, one accomplished and one potential, full of petty jealousy and masquerading as an eulogy.” This quest to share in death is part of the confessional element here; however, there is also a cry for attention. Adds Hume-George, “Although Sylvia’s Death is ostensibly ‘for Sylvia Plath’ it might have been more accurately dedicated ‘for myself on the occasion of Sylvia’s death.’”

Sexton would affirm her commitment to life occasionally, as in her 1966 poem Live, where she states flatly:

The poison just didn’t take
So I won’t hang around in my hospital shift,
Repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
The dream, the excitable gift.

These lighter moods would not last in her words, and eventually pleas for attention and themes of desperation would permeate her works. Maxine Kumin writes, “Anne basked in the attention she attracted, partly because it was antithetical to an earlier generation’s view of the woman writer as poetess and partly because she was flattered by and enjoyed the adoration of her public.” Reacting to a childhood wherein she felt rejected and unwanted, Sexton was, Kumin notes, the “intensely private individual” who “bared her liver to the eagle in public readings where almost invariably there was standing room only.”

Anne Sexton equaled Sylvia Plath in death in 1974 when she was able to coax enough carbon monoxide into her system to complete the task at which Sylvia Plath had previously succeeded.  Sexton’s poetry is monumental in its visceral and passionate exploration of the modern American feminine psyche; it is tragic because its central themes are tied to the destruction of its creator.

Listen to Anne Sexton's poems Silvia’s Death, Just Once, and Said The Poet To The Analyst as read by Jennifer Sichel, a researcher at NPG

For Further Reading:
Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems (Houghton Mifflin, 1981).
Diane Hume-George, Oedipus Anne (University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Anne Sexton/Rollie McKenna, 1961/Silver gelatin print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Rollie McKenna / © 1961 Rollie McKenna

Portrait Competition Update

The jury for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009 met at the National Portrait Gallery offices on October 24 to choose the semifinalist works. Portraits in nearly all visual arts media were carefully reviewed, and the jury members were struck by how much extraordinary work they were able to see, and how many artists they were discovering for the first time. 

At the end of a long day, a group of approximately 100 portraits were selected to be brought to Washington for final review next spring.  The jurors were Wanda Corn, professor emerita at Stanford University; Kerry James Marshall, artist, Chicago; Brian O’Doherty, artist, New York City; Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for the New Yorker; and three members of the NPG staff:  Director Martin Sullivan, Deputy Director and Chief Curator Carolyn Kinder Carr, and Curator of Painting and Sculpture Brandon Fortune.

See our last update, and visit the competition's Web site for more information. The exhibition of finalist work will open at the Portrait Gallery on October 23, 2009. 

New Exhibition: The Mask of Lincoln

In the two-hundredth year since his birth, Abraham Lincoln remains as much a puzzle as he was to his contemporaries. “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln,” a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, shows the changing face that Abraham Lincoln presented to the world as he led the fight for the Union. 

The exhibition opens today, and runs until July 5, 2009.  It is part of a yearlong Smithsonian-wide celebration of the bicentennial, exploring the life and times of the nation's most mythic and transformative president.

Warren Perry, a researcher at the National Portrait Gallery, spoke with NPG historian David Ward, curator of the exhibition. The interview is excerpted below.

WP: What are your favorite objects in the exhibition?

DW: Warren, one of the great things about the Portrait Gallery is that we have a really excellent selection—probably the best in the United States—of Lincoln images   My favorite image is one that a lot of people will know, which is the cracked plate photograph by Alexander Gardner, which was taken on February 21, 1885 (shown above). 

In the course of removing the plate from the camera, Alexander Gardner cracked it, so it was in two pieces.  And he could only create one image from it.  And it’s really this wonderfully evocative picture of Lincoln at the end of the war, where he’s tired, he’s worn out, his eyes are deep-socketed. And yet he has this small smile on his face, which is one, a smile of satisfaction, but it’s also a mysterious smile. We never really know what Lincoln was thinking, and that’s why I called this show “The Mask of Lincoln.”

WP: There are a lot of photographs, daguerreotypes—these non-painted objects, real images of Lincoln.  How many objects are in this exhibition?

DW: There are thirty portraits of Lincoln in the exhibition.  The majority of them are daguerreotypes—photographs as we know them now. There’s several drawings, a printed document, one oil painting actually, a miniature. 

Lincoln came of political age in the era of photography, with photography becoming a popular and inexpensive democratic art.  And he realized, early on, that it was possible to use photography for political purposes as well as personal purposes—not just to reveal a likeness to your loved ones, or to a small group of people. But it was a way of commanding political power by disseminating your image in carte de visites and other larger pictures—such as the cracked plate that I just mentioned—larger images of yourself, essentially bill-boarding your political brand

WP: He played to the greatest and newest medium of his age.

DW: Exactly, Lincoln loved technology, and in that way he was quintessentially American.  He was a working man—he worked with his hands and had a fascination with technology.  He’s the only president ever to have received a patent for one of his inventions.  During the Civil War he was intimately involved with the development of new technology, whether it’s in rifles, balloon surveillance, and telegraphic communication. 

And he, technically, was very interested in photography.  He had his picture taken a lot, from the photographers who lived and worked just down the street, actually, from the National Portrait Gallery.  He would drop in and have his picture taken by Gardner, Brady, or one of the others. 

And this was a commercial transaction for the photographers.  Lincoln wouldn’t have to pay for the pictures, but they would then sell images, that they would display to the public. And Lincoln was very involved in, again, disseminating his image through the course of his political career. 

Listen to the entire interview with historian David Ward (10:28)

For more on Lincoln, see the online exhibition for “One Life: The Mask of Lincoln.” If you visit the exhibition in person, be sure to take the cell phone audio tour, or download the tour to your mp3 player before you visit.  

Abraham Lincoln/Alexander Gardner, 1865/Albumen silver print/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Presidential Trivia for Election Time, part IV

The final installment in a series of blog articles on presidential trivia (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4).

George Washington (left) won the first race for the presidency in 1789 without opposition, gaining the office with sixty-nine electoral votes; he did not claim a political party affiliation during that contest. The only other election in American history in which no candidate had party ties was in 1824. This election would eventually be decided by the House of Representatives and would result in John Quincy Adams’s sole term in office.

More presidents were born in October (six) than any other month.

More presidents were born in Virginia (eight) than any other state.

The Oval Office has only been around for a century. Designed for William Howard Taft, it brings the presidency closer to the operations of the executive offices in the west wing. President Reagan spoke to the nation about the space shuttle Challenger tragedy from the Oval Office, and President Bush addressed America the night of September 11, 2001, from there also.

According to the White House Web site, it takes 570 gallons of paint to cover the exterior of the presidential residence. Also, the White House residence has thirty-five bathrooms.

Fourteen vice presidents have become president.

All three presidents buried in Tennessee (Jackson, Polk, Andrew Johnson) were from the Carolinas.

              © The Norman Rockwell Estate Licensing Co.

Richard Nixon (right) was born farther west (Yorba Linda, California) than any other president.

The strongest independent candidacy of modern times was that of H. Ross Perot in 1992. Perot received no electoral votes, but harvested more than 19,700,000 popular votes, more than half of then–President Bush’s popular vote that election; the 1992 winner, Bill Clinton, received almost 45,000,000 votes, far from a popular majority. Perot gathered almost 19 percent of the popular vote in that election. The closest non–major party candidate to that election day performance was also H. Ross Perot (he ran as the Reform Party candidate his second time out), who took more than 8,000,000 votes, or about 8.5 percent of the popular vote, in 1996.

Two dutiful early cabinet members: Joseph Habersham of Georgia served as postmaster general for George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts held three separate offices in George Washington’s cabinet—postmaster general, secretary of war, secretary of state—and then went on to serve as the first secretary of state under John Adams.

Sources:

Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O’Brien
Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts by Isaac Asimov
American Presidents by David C. Whitney
Portraits of the Presidents by Frederick Voss
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/facts.html

George Washington (Lansdowne portrait)/Gilbert Stuart, 1796/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery; acquired as a gift to the nation through the generosity of the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation

Richard Nixon/Norman Percevel Rockwell, 1968/Oil on canvas/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; donated to the people of the United States of America by the Richard Nixon Foundation/© The Norman Rockwell Estate Licensing Co.

Portrait of Joseph McCarthy by George Tames

Every Thursday evening, the National Portrait Gallery presents “Face-to-Face,” a portrait talk about a selected portrait on view in the gallery. As part of this regular series, NPG historian David Ward discussed this photograph of Joseph McCarthy, taken in 1954 by George Tames. You can see this portrait in the “Twentieth-Century Americans” exhibition on the third floor.

On February 9, 1950, a little known junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, proclaimed that he had a list of 205 Communist Party members who worked in the State Department with the full knowledge of the secretary of state. McCarthy’s speech came shortly after the Communist takeover in China, the U.S.S.R’s successful detonation of an atomic bomb, and suspected spy Alger Hiss’s conviction for perjury.

For many, McCarthy’s charges explained why the West was experiencing setbacks, and made him a formidable political force. It marked the beginning of demagogic red baiting and made the term "McCarthyism" synonymous with hysterical anti-Communism. McCarthy had no evidence for his accusations and was censured by the Senate in 1954; "McCarthyism" would be remembered for its corrosive effect on America’s ability to deal effectively with real Communists abroad and at home.  Sitting to McCarthy’s left is Roy Cohn, lead investigator for McCarthy’s Senate subcommittee.

Listen to David Ward's Face-to-Face talk on Joseph McCarthy (33:27)

The next Face-to-Face portrait talk is this Thursday, November 6, when National Portrait Gallery Director Martin Sullivan speaks about the temporary installation "Four Indian Kings."  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.

Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn/George Tames, 1954/National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of Frances O. Tames/ © The New York Times/George Tames