Location: Yale Center for British Art

Since its public opening in 1968—one of the most tumultuous years in U.S. history—the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., has had to confront America’s history of exclusion, and portraiture as an elitist art form. Far from representing E pluribus unum, “out of many, one,” portraiture has left women, citizens of color, and the disabled on the margins of history. Today, the National Portrait Gallery is looking to tell the story of this erasure through a combination of original research, commissions, special exhibitions, performances, and out-of-the-box strategies to recontextualize past histories, tell new stories, and engage audiences by providing a safe place for challenging ideas. Join Kim Sajet, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, for a lecture discussing these strategies.



Established to honor the memory of Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, Yale University Art Gallery director from 1957 to 1971, the annual Ritchie Lectures, which are jointly sponsored by the the Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, bring distinguished members of the international visual arts community to the university. These lectures are free and open to the public, honoring Ritchie’s belief that the art museum serves as a gathering place for all members of the community.