Make thousands of new acquaintances! Featuring scientists, statesmen, and film stars, glimpsed through rare nineteenth-century daguerreotypes or year-old digital video, the National Portrait Gallery collections bring you face to face with America. Get to know us better. Browse, search, explore, and visit.
The images of the National Portrait Gallery collection objects are part of Smithsonian Open Access. This means you are free to download, transform, and share thousands of portraits for any purpose, for free, without asking permission from the National Portrait Gallery. Smithsonian Open Access invites you to discover a world where you can learn, research, explore, and create in ways you couldn’t before. What will you imagine?
We recognize that since this nation’s founding, who is represented—and how one is represented—reflects the country’s flaws as well as its strengths. The National Portrait Gallery strives to present a more complete narrative, one that acknowledges the history of slavery, racism, and inequality in the United States. Our research and scholarship is ongoing, and historical perspectives evolve with time.
Please contact us if you have questions or concerns.
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Use quotation marks to ensure all words are included, in exact order, for example “voting rights” or “edwin forrest as macbeth”.
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Use filters to narrow search results. For NAMES, search on last name only, and then use the Name filter to find the sitter or artist you are looking for.
Go to Advanced Search redirects you to the Smithsonian Collections Search Center, which provides additional search options. Results are pre-filtered on the National Portrait Gallery collection.
Only return images available through Open Access limits results to objects with Open Access images. Open Access images are in the public domain, meaning they are free of copyright restrictions, and you can use them for any purpose, free of charge. They are downloadable at the maximum size available.
Only return results on view in the museum limits results to National Portrait Gallery objects that are currently on view. To find objects on view that are on loan to the National Portrait Gallery, search the Catalog of American Portraits, under Research.
