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The National Portrait Gallery, collections hold more than 20,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and photographs that portray men and women who have made significant contributions to the history, development and culture of the people of the United States. The exhibitions listed below include objects from the museums permanent collection as well as loans from other organizations. Temporary Exhibitions: November 26, 2008 through September 27, 2009 November 7, 2008 through July 5, 2009 October 24 through June 21, 2009 October 10, 2008 through February 1, 2009 September 12, 2008 through January 25, 2009 May 9, 2008 through February 8, 2009 March 21, 2008 through January 25, 2009 Permanent Exhibitions Temporary exhibitions
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"Portraiture Now: Feature Photography" focuses on six photographers who, by working on assignment for publications such as The New Yorker, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine each bring their distinctive perspective on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience. Critically acclaimed for their independent fine art work, these photographers—Katy Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller and Alec Soth—have also pursued a variety of editorial projects, taking advantage of both the opportunities and the parameters that these assignments introduce. The resulting work builds upon a longstanding tradition of photographic portraiture for the popular press and highlights creative possibilities for 21st century portrayal. 
No American has had more written or said about him than Abraham Lincoln. To both his contemporaries and posterity, Lincoln has been an endless subject of mystery and fascination. "One Life: The Mask of Lincoln" will examine how Lincoln used the new art of photography to convey his image to Americans, letting them see in him what they most desired. The National Portrait Gallery will commemorate the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth with this "One Life" exhibition that draws on the Portrait Gallery's extensive collection of Lincoln portraits, a collection that charts Lincoln's passage from a fresh-faced Illinois congressman to his grizzled isolation as president. The exhibition will provide many faces of Lincoln for the public to ponder. It will be one of the rare times that the original cracked-plate portrait of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner will be displayed (in order to preserve the original, most often a facsimile of the photograph is on view). David Ward, historian, is the exhibition curator.
Photographic jewelry flourished throughout the period from 1840 to 1875 and beyond. This poignant exhibition, drawn primarily from the collection of Larry J. West, features rare and exquisite jewelry containing portraits in the 19th century's four main photographic processes—daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and paper prints. Produced, exchanged and treasured as "tokens of affection and regard," these relics of loving attachments speak to the deepest of human sentiments. They are complemented in the exhibition by portraits (a gift from Mr. West) of some of the pioneering American photographers who created and marketed photographic jewelry, including Mathew Brady, Jeremiah Gurney, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Ann Shumard, curator of photographs, is the exhibition curator.
In the exhibition "Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs," the National Portrait Gallery features women who have challenged and changed America. Drawn exclusively from the Portrait Gallery's collection, these revealing portraits show women who have reached the summit of achievement in politics, business, the arts, sports, performance, music and science. The exhibition includes photographs of Margaret Wise Brown, Amelia Earhart, Althea Gibson, Billie Holiday, Helen Keller, Marilyn Monroe, Georgia O'Keeffe, Gertrude Stein, Gloria Steinem and Wendy Wasserstein. Featuring distinguished 20th century photographers the exhibition includes works by Philippe Halsman, Lotte Jacobi, Lisette Model, Irving Penn and Edward Steichen, among others. "Women of Our Time" is as much about the art of photographic portraiture as it is a celebration of its subjects. This exhibition is sponsored by The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and Robert Yellowless.
The year 2008 marks the 225th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolution. To commemorate this event, the National Portrait Gallery is showing the earliest surviving full-length oil portraits of North American Native people painted from life. In 1710, four men were chosen to represent the Iroquoian Confederacy of the Mohawk River Valley before Queen Anne to highlight the plight of the colonies in the English military offensive against the French. The men were presented to the royal court as kings. John Verelst was commissioned to paint a portrait of each of the visitors, and he did so with the decorum deemed appropriate for royalty and heads of state. Lent by the Portrait Gallery of Canada, a program of Library and Archives of Canada. 
Featuring sixty posters ranging in date from the late 19th century to the present, this exhibition demonstrates how posters function as portraiture. Subjects as diverse as General Pershing, "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Joe Louis, Judy Garland, aviator Jimmy Doolittle and labor leader Lane Kirkland all enhance the poster's mission to attract attention and persuade. Dramatic, colorful and often enormous, these likenesses hardly seem subtle. But what a poster communicates about an individual is usually secondary to its principal message—selling war bonds, announcing the arrival of the circus, advertising a product, or publicizing a concert or film. Posters invariably project the public image, enhancing, promoting, exploiting, or upgrading the information we subconsciously absorb about celebrity figures. 
The nation's only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, this exhibition
lies at the heart of the Portrait Gallery's mission to tell the American story through the individuals who
have shaped it. Visitors will see an enhanced and extended display of multiple images of 42 presidents
of the United States, including Gilbert Stuart's "Lansdowne" portrait of George Washington, the
famous "cracked plate" photograph of Abraham Lincoln and whimsical sculptures of Presidents
Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush by noted caricaturist Pat
Oliphant. Presidents Washington, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D.
Roosevelt will be given expanded attention because of their significant impact on the office. Presidents from FDR to Bill Clinton are featured in a video component of the exhibit.
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