National Gallery of Art Puts Black Americans in the Frame

The National Gallery of Art will present Remember Me: Picturing African Americans in Early Photography, an exhibition of 19th- and early 20th-century African American portraiture.

Featuring approximately 70 works, many from the National Gallery of Art's collection, the exhibition highlights how its sitters used photography as a means of self-empowerment.

The exhibition opens with Black Entrepreneurs, which tells the story of James Presley Ball, Glenalvin Goodridge, and Augustus Washington, pioneering African American portrait photographers who established studios in the US during the 1840s and 1850s.

The exhibition will showcase their work alongside depictions of Black life and culture before and after the Civil War. Remember Me opens November 7 through to March 14, 2027.