Welcome to the National Portrait Gallery Press Office
The Gallery's Press Office handles enquiries from national and
international media. This service enables you to access press releases and download high-resolution images to accompany your stories.
Use of images and department contacts
The Press Office supplies images that are directly promotional to the Gallery's exhibitions, displays and public programme. If you are looking for an image from the Gallery's Collection to accompany a story that is not directly
promotional to the Gallery, you will need to contact the National Portrait Gallery's Picture Library on: picturelibrary@npg.org.uk.
For all Press Office enquiries please contact:
Neil Evans, Senior Press Officer, Tel 020 7312 2452 or email nevans@npg.org.uk, Eleanor Macnair, Press Officer, Tel 020 7321 6620 or email emacnair@npg.org.uk, or Helen Corcoran,
Communications Assistant, Tel 020 7321 6610 or email hcorcoran@npg.org.uk
Register to download images from the Press Office
In order to access press images you need to register your details with us. You will then be able to download images.
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Current Exhibitions and Displays | News | Forthcoming Exhibitions and Displays | Exhibition Archive | News Archive
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GAY ICONS (2 Jul 2009 - 18 Oct 2009)
Read press release | View images The first portrait exhibition to celebrate the contribution of gay people and gay icons to history and culture
60 photographs selected by Waheed Alli, Alan Hollinghurst, Elton John, Jackie Kay, Billie Jean King, Ian McKellen, Chris Smith, Ben Summerskill, Sandi Toksvig and Sarah Waters
An important photography exhibition, Gay Icons, at the National Portrait Gallery (2 July–18 October 2009) will celebrate the contribution of gay people - and the significance of the gay icon - to history and culture. Ten selectors have worked with the Gallery to make their own personal choices of six individuals, their ‘icons’. Not only does this exhibition include many well-known icons, who may or may not be gay themselves, it also reveals some surprises and will encourage a wide audience to think about familiar faces in new ways.
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GEORGE ALWAYS: PORTRAITS OF GEORGE MELLY BY MAGGI HAMBLING (27 Jun 2009 - 10 Jan 2010)
Read press release George Always, Maggi Hambling’s tribute to her friend the late George Melly will be on public display in London for the first time in June. The National Portrait Gallery will show the last twelve ink drawings the jazz singer posed for alongside oil paintings made from life, memory and imagination. |
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ART TEACHER WINS BP PORTRAIT AWARD WITH PAINTING OF TWILIGHT DAUGHTER (18 Jun 2009 - 20 Sep 2009)
Read press release | View images ON TUESDAY 16 JUNE 2009 the winner of the BP Portrait Award 2009 was announced by Sebastian Faulks at the National Portrait Gallery. In a record-breaking year for entries the prestigious first prize was won by 44-year-old Surrey artist Peter Monkman. His winning portrait, Changeling 2, is part of a series of portraits of his daughter, Anna, at different stages of her life. Peter wins £25,000 and a commission, at the National Portrait Gallery Trustees’ discretion, worth £4,000. |
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BOB DYLAN 1966 EUROPEAN TOUR: PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARRY FEINSTEIN (11 May 2009 - 30 Aug 2009)
Read press release | View images Photographs of Bob Dylan’s 1966 European Tour by Barry Feinstein will be displayed for the first time in London at the National Portrait Gallery in May. These photographs offer a rare insight into the time when Dylan was arguably at his most controversial and iconic.
Having taken the portrait of Bob Dylan that appeared on the sleeve of his 1964 album The Times They are A-Changin, Feinstein was commissioned by LIFE magazine to photograph the 1966 European tour. It was on this tour that Dylan was famously jeered on stage for using an electric guitar. The photographs on display were taken in Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, London, Bristol, and Paris. These are not conventional hackneyed shots of Dylan performing but a private view of an introspective Dylan captured amongst the endless hotel rooms, engagements and travel involved with the tour.
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FRANCIS ALŸS: FABIOLA (2 May 2009 - 20 Sep 2009)
Read press release | View images Created by the internationally acclaimed artist Francis Alÿs, Fabiola is an installation of over 300 portraits of a fourth-century Christian saint collected by the artist from flea markets and antique shops throughout Europe and the Americas. These seemingly identical portraits, including paintings, embroideries and miniatures are all copies of a lost original of Fabiola by the French nineteenth-century painter, Jean-Jacques Henner. |
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PORTRAITS OF ASTRONOMERS (21 Mar 2009 - 12 Jul 2009)
Read press release | View images A newly-commissioned painted portrait of the Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, Baron Rees, President of the Royal Society, will form the focus of a display to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy. This new portrait will be shown alongside recent photographs of astronomers by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies, and further portraits from the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection. |
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MARTIN AMIS AND FRIENDS: Photographs by Angela Gorgas (10 Jan 2009 - 5 Jul 2009)
Read press release At the start of the year in which Martin Amis celebrates his sixtieth birthday, the National Portrait Gallery will display previously unseen photographs taken by his friend, the photographer Angela Gorgas. These evocative black and white portraits provide an intimate document of the literary and artistic circles in which they moved in the late 1970s.
Taken in London and Paris the photographs feature literary and social figures including Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens, Kingsley Amis, James Fenton, Pat Kavanagh and Candia McWilliam. These photographs have remained in the photographer’s private collection for almost 30 years and offer us a unique insight into Amis and his friends in the period when the writer was working on the novels Success, Other People and the screenplay for the film Saturn 3.
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