The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Museum
Washington, D.C.
January 24 – August 30, 2026
“The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” presents the latest in contemporary portraiture by finalists from the seventh edition of the museum’s national portrait competition. Established in 2006 through a private endowment, the triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition invites artists living and working in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, to submit one portrait created in the past three years for consideration by a panel of experts. The finalists’ works are then shown in an exhibition.
“The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” includes 34 portraits (by 35 artists) in mediums ranging from painting, photography and sculpture to immersive, time-based media installations. The artworks were chosen from more than 3,300 submissions to an anonymous open call, which was juried by experts in the fields of portraiture and contemporary art. The selection features portraits by artists based in 12 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.
“The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” is co-curated by the competition’s director Taína Caragol, the Portrait Gallery’s senior curator of painting and sculpture, and Charlotte Ickes, the Portrait Gallery’s curator of time-based media art and special projects. Jurors for the 2025 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition were Carla Acevedo-Yates, curator, writer and member of the artistic team for documenta 16; Huey Copeland, the Andrew W. Mellon Chair and Professor of Modern Art and Black Study, Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh; LaToya Ruby Frazier, artist; and Daniel Lind-Ramos, artist. “The Outwin 2025” co-curators Caragol and Ickes also served on the jury with Rhea L. Combs, the Portrait Gallery’s former director of curatorial affairs.