National Portrait Gallery Portrait Competition Winners

I wrote about the National Portrait Gallery in Washington a few weeks ago. It was an institutional profile, so I don’t mind writing about the place again in the context of its new exhibition, The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today. It’s the gallery’s triennial look at the state of American portraiture, and this year, it’s both elegant and seductive. That’s a hard-to-achieve pairing. Stately galleries, pitch-perfect arrangement of the art, and, of course, very good art deliver an experience that’s bracing at times as well as consoling, depending on your frame of mind.

The Outwin is funded by a bequest from Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920–2005), a docent at the NPG, a collector, and the widow of a Foreign Service officer. Every three years, the museum selects a committee to vet open-call submissions for its Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. This year, the 42 best were selected from 2,774 submissions and awarded prizes. The jury is first-rate and includes Kathleen Ash-Milby, the curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, artists Catherine Opie and Ebony Patterson, and the art critic John Yau, whose work I read whenever I see it. Three NPG curators were jurors, too. All the portraits are from the last two or three years, so they’re created in Covid’s and the 2020 race riots’ terrible pall.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

I wrote about the National Portrait Gallery in Washington a few weeks ago. It was an institutional profile, so I don’t mind writing about the place again in the context of its new exhibition, The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today. It’s the gallery’s triennial look at the state of American portraiture, and this year, it’s both elegant and seductive. That’s a hard-to-achieve pairing. Stately galleries, pitch-perfect arrangement of the art, and, of course, very good art deliver an experience that’s bracing at times as well as consoling, depending on your frame of mind.

The Outwin is funded by a bequest from Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920–2005), a docent at the NPG, a collector, and the widow of a Foreign Service officer. Every three years, the museum selects a committee to vet open-call submissions for its Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. This year, the 42 best were selected from 2,774 submissions and awarded prizes. The jury is first-rate and includes Kathleen Ash-Milby, the curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, artists Catherine Opie and Ebony Patterson, and the art critic John Yau, whose work I read whenever I see it. Three NPG curators were jurors, too. All the portraits are from the last two or three years, so they’re created in Covid’s and the 2020 race riots’ terrible pall.