Blog

Looking to the Collection: Activists and Activism
By Sophie Williams

For this year’s UK Black History Month, in a time in which we’ve seen the focus of the world turned towards racial justice and activism in a way that we’ve never quite seen before, I was invited by the National Portrait Gallery to cast an eye on the activists in their Collection, and to highlight some of the stories and lives of the sitters that I think we can learn from today as we fight for racial equality for all. …

By National Portrait Gallery,

• 3 Comments

15 October 2020

Rediscovering Black Portraiture

Recently we caught up with opera singer, BBC broadcaster and mastermind behind the Rediscovering Black Portraiture project, Peter Brathwaite.…

By National Portrait Gallery,

• 5 Comments

14 July 2020

An interview with Zadie Smith and Toyin Ojih Odutola by Katy Hessel

Zadie Smith and Toyin Ojih Odutola’s works have not only had a profound effect on the world at large, but on each other. To mark the unveiling of the Gallery’s latest commission, Sadie by Toyin Ojih Odutola, Katy Hessel, art historian and founder of @thegreatwomenartists spoke to both of them about capturing, and being captured. Friends, admirers and followers of each others’ work, we celebrate one of the greatest living artists portraying one of the greatest living writers.…

By National Portrait Gallery,

• 0 Comments

06 July 2020

Lockdown, portraiture and Captain Tom: In Conversation with Adam Salisbury

Some truly inspiring stories have come out of the coronavirus pandemic, none more so than Captain Tom Moore, a British Army veteran who completed 100 laps of his garden for his 100th birthday, raising over £30 million for the NHS. We sat down with artist Adam Salisbury, who painted this portrait of Captain Tom, to find out about his inspiration, process, and the reaction he’s received. …

By National Portrait Gallery,

• 2 Comments

26 June 2020

Amrou and Tom respond to the Cecil Beaton Bright Young Things

Cecil Beaton’s early studio portraits of debutantes and celebrities helped define the image of the ‘Bright Young Thing’, with elaborate backdrops and dramatic costumery. But it was perhaps through his self-portraits that he most strikingly explored the power of dressing up to transform, liberate and play.…

By Amrou Al-Kadhi & Tom Rasmussen, Intern

• 1 Comment

04 June 2020

Highlights from cataloguing

From December 2018-June 2019 I had the opportunity to catalogue part of a large collection of photographs given by former Head of Photographs Terence Pepper. This collection of more than four thousand images ranges from early 20th Century postcards to 1960s portraits, of which I catalogued those by leading photographers Cecil Beaton, Tom Blau, Carl Van Vechten, Angus McBean, and rediscovered women photographers Eleanor Holmes (1862-1946) and Lilian Beel (1875-1940).…

By Grace Lee, Intern

• 3 Comments

18 December 2019

• Photography