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PORTRAITS

PORTRAITS

National Portrait Gallery

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1 Creator

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4.4

(9)

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1 Creator

Art, biography, history and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Join Director Kim Sajet as she chats with artists, historians, and thought leaders about the big and small ways that portraits shape our world.

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5 Listeners

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4.4

(9)

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Top 10 PORTRAITS Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best PORTRAITS episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to PORTRAITS for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite PORTRAITS episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

PORTRAITS - Postal Pairings
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08/23/22 • 22 min

Before cable news and email and Twitter, it was the postal service that transmitted ideas and information across land, sea, and political divides. Kim speaks with National Postal Museum chief curator Dan Piazza about some of the messages that stamps themselves were communicating, including a few asides from Philatelist-in-Chief, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

We also pair some noteworthy stamps to original artwork that lives right here at the National Portrait Gallery.

See the portraits we discuss:

Benjamin Franklin by Duplessis

Franklin’s stamp

Roosevelt and the Little White House

Roosevelt at his desk

Susan B. Anthony, bronze bust

Susan B. Anthony, three cents

Susan B. Anthony, photograph

Susan B. Anthony, fifty cents

Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable

Benjamin Banneker

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3 Listeners

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PORTRAITS - BONUS: The Case of the Missing Portrait
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10/18/22 • 30 min

Dr. Dorothy Andersen solved a vexing medical mystery by identifying cystic fibrosis. But the mystery of her missing portrait remained unsolved.

This week, we're featuring an episode from the Lost Women of Science podcast about a physician who changed the way we understand acute lung and gastrointestinal problems in small children. But if she was such a medical heavyweight, why did her 1963 portrait disappear from Columbia University's Babies Hospital? The answer tells us something about the perils of memorialization.

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PORTRAITS - A Shortcut Across Time
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08/09/22 • 25 min

José Andrés is the Michelin-starred chef known for jumping into action to feed people affected by hurricanes, wildfires, and most recently the war in Ukraine. But he’s also a huge admirer of a woman whose photograph lives at the National Portrait Gallery– the Civil War nurse Clara Barton. Museum director Kim Sajet talks with Andrés about his call for ‘longer tables,’ and also takes us down the block to Barton’s old digs to see how their stories overlap.

See Clara Barton’s portrait here.

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PORTRAITS - BONUS: Finding Cleopatra
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09/06/22 • 27 min

From our fellow Smithsonian podcast, Sidedoor, the story of Edmonia Lewis— the first sculptor of African American and Native American (Mississauga) descent to achieve international fame. Her 3,000-pound masterwork, “The Death of Cleopatra,” commemorated another powerful woman who broke with convention... and then it disappeared.

See Edmonia Lewis’s portrait here.

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PORTRAITS - Glimpsing Freedom
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06/28/22 • 24 min

Photography and the Civil War crashed into one another, making it affordable for soldiers to have their picture taken before going off to war. What Black soldiers communicated in these images was a desire not just for freedom, but for citizenship. But they didn't always control how their photographs were used.

Drs. Deborah Willis and Rhea Combs talk with Kim about the photographs taken of - and for - Civil War Soldiers. Because it turns out there’s a big difference.

See the portraits we discuss:

Harper’s Weekly special edition

Gordon after his escape

Peter with scarred back

Tintype of soldier

Soldier with painted backdrop

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PORTRAITS - Things We Take For Granted
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07/12/22 • 27 min

Atlantic editor Vann R. Newkirk II talks to Kim about the mutability of memory, as seen through two portraits of the abolitionist John Brown. He also explains how a photograph of his mom helped him to appreciate the fragility of democracy in the United States, and why he tries to keep a garden wherever he goes.

See the portraits we discuss:

George Washington Carver

John Brown daguerreotype

John Brown painting

Marylin Thurman Newkirk

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2 Listeners

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PORTRAITS - The Woman Who Knocked Science Sideways
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05/31/22 • 26 min

Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu was a towering figure in science whose parity experiment shattered our understanding of the physical world. She enjoyed rockstar status in China, met the pope, inspired an opera and even became a “Jeopardy!” question. But to Jada Yuan, she was grandma.

See the portraits we discuss:

Dr. Wu in the lab

Tsung-Dao Lee, Nobel Laureate

Chen-Ning Yang, Nobel Laureate

Dr. Wu on the forever stamp

Also, check out Jada Yuan’s article about her grandmother here!

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PORTRAITS - Speaking with the Secretary
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09/24/19 • 24 min

Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution Lonnie Bunch says a portrait can restore humanity, as in the case of Henrietta Lacks. She's the woman whose 'immortal' cells were taken without her knowledge and then used to pioneer important medical advances. Bunch, a scholar of American history, also describes images of one of his favorite presidents, Lyndon B. Johnson. As a lawmaker, Johnson had a 20-year record of voting against civil rights. Then he became a force for racial justice.

Check out the images we discuss on our website: https://npg.si.edu/podcasts/speaking-secretary

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2 Listeners

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PORTRAITS - Oppenheimer's Close-Up
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11/07/23 • 25 min

The blockbuster Oppenheimer movie focuses on two portrayals of J. Robert Oppenheimer. One is the famous physicist known as the architect of the atomic bomb, and the second is a more vulnerable man, maligned as a communist sympathiser.

Then there’s a third portrait. It makes a cameo in the film and it resides right here at the National Portrait Gallery. Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Kai Bird, whose book inspired the movie, takes a look with us.

See the portrait we discuss:

J. Robert Oppenheimer, Time magazine cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

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PORTRAITS - A Cover Like No Other
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11/01/22 • 26 min

When Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine, she wanted a cover image that would break completely with the norms of the day. There would be no high-end models and no teasers for makeup tips. Instead, the preview issue featured a goddess with eight arms. And she was blue.

Kim speaks with Gloria and also with the magazine’s first editor, Suzanne Braun Levine, about the ways women had been visually portrayed until their groundbreaking publication hit the newsstands, and how the staff at Ms. worked to turn those stereotypes on their head.

See the portraits we discuss:

Pauline Perlmutter Steinem

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, 1971

Marilyn Monroe

Student Protest

Susan B. Anthony

Ms. magazine preview cover

Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes, 2013

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FAQ

How many episodes does PORTRAITS have?

PORTRAITS currently has 74 episodes available.

What topics does PORTRAITS cover?

The podcast is about Visual Arts, Podcasts and Arts.

What is the most popular episode on PORTRAITS?

The episode title 'Postal Pairings' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on PORTRAITS?

The average episode length on PORTRAITS is 21 minutes.

How often are episodes of PORTRAITS released?

Episodes of PORTRAITS are typically released every 14 days.

When was the first episode of PORTRAITS?

The first episode of PORTRAITS was released on Jun 4, 2019.

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