Calendar

First Prize: £15,000
Deadline for entry: 17.00 on Tuesday 31 May 2022

Open to all, it is the leading international competition, and celebrates and promotes the very best in contemporary photography.

We are thrilled to invite you to a talk on one of our lesser known areas of the Gallery and its contents, the Heinz Archive and Library.

Join experts from the National Portrait Gallery, Athena Arts Foundation, Megaverse and the National Youth Theatre for a live streaming, discussion and Q&A around our ‘Living Portrait’ of Jem Belcher. This event forms part of Art History Festival 2022.

Join us for an in person first look at the Preview of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2022. One of the most prestigious portrait competitions across the world, it has established a reputation for creativity and excellence, with works submitted by a range of photographers, from leading professionals to talented amateurs and the most exciting emerging artists. 

Visit our new exhibition in partnership with Elstree Screen Arts Academy, Elstree: Behind the scenes of the British Hollywood to see new portraits and reimagined stories of people connected to Elstree Studios. New work by artist Marysa Dowling and young people from Elstree Screen Arts Academy sits alongside interviews from people who have worked at Elstree either behind the camera, in front of the camera or making the sets.

The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics presents some of the most familiar figures from English history and instantly recognisable in the portraits that have preserved their likenesses for five hundred years, encompassing some of the most famous portraits in the National Portrait Gallery Collection. 

This display, selected from the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery by guest curator, author and journalist, Dylan Jones, brings together portraits of celebrated British individuals, who identify as writers. The exhibition presents methods and approaches used by artists to capture the complex identities of writers, including gender identity, sexuality, race, ethnicity, national and regional identity, migration and colonisation.

COMING HOME sees the Gallery sending portraits of iconic individuals to places they are closely associated with.

Portraits from the National Portrait Gallery is a new collaborative display organised with Compton Verney Art Gallery, Warwickshire, to explore identity, representation and the contemporary relevance of portraiture.

COMING HOME sees the Gallery sending portraits of iconic individuals to places they are closely associated with.

COMING HOME sees the Gallery sending portraits of iconic individuals to places they are closely associated with.

In partnership with the University of West London, filmmaker Narvir Singh and local young people we are exploring the stories of those people connected to Heathrow Airport.

Suspended from the Whitechapel Idea Store (local library), the large scale letters spelling out Bangla will be visible from the road covered in brightly coloured saree fabric and LED lights. Walking underneath the structure you can look up to see embroidered murals revealing some of the research produced by the Citizen Researchers and artist Ruhul Abdin, including the original sketches by Biman Mullick for the first stamps of new nation Bangladesh in 1971. It is a celebration of the identity, people and stories that make up the diverse Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets.