There are 21 Smithsonian museums and galleries, and only 11 of these are on the National Mall.

One that's just 5 blocks from the mall is the National Portrait Gallery... Sajet: This is our big signature picture of George Washington.

Curry, voice-over: and it is one of just a handful of museums in the world fully dedicated to portraiture.

Sajet: He was the only president who actually wasn't elected.

Curry, voice-over: Kim Sajet became the director of the National Portrait Gallery in 2013, and I was intrigued by what she had to say about this art form and the evolution of the museum.

Welcome to "WETA Arts."

I'm gonna jump right in.

What is the oldest portrait we have here at the National Portrait Gallery?

Around 1616, 1615, we have some engravings.

They're actually part of a book to document rulers from William the Conqueror until James I.

In the collection, there's a portrait of John Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown.

♪ In that book, interestingly, too, is a portrait of Pocahontas.

♪ Just looking at it, I couldn't guess.

Yeah.

She's literally been whitewashed.

This is a Native American acclimated to colonization.

Fascinating.

Never trust a portrait, I just want to tell you.

There's always a backstory.

Curry: This museum has a rich, rich history and is tied to another museum.

How did the National Portrait Gallery end up here?

The museum that we were based on is the National Portrait Gallery in London, and they were established in 1856.

They're full of kings and queens and princes and princesses, right?

We don't have any of those.

The congressional charter is, collect the portraits of men and women who've made a leading contribution to U.S. history and culture.

Our first book was actually called "This New Man."

There's about 136 portraits in it.

♪ Only 9 women, only 3 African Americans, no Asian Americans.

It is a very limited version of our history, driven by who we've decided to allow to be an achiever.

Two things you just said-- number one, eligibility...

Yes.

and talk to us a little bit about what that used to look like and what that looks like now.

To be in the Portrait Gallery, you had to be 10 years dead, right?

This idea was that it would give us a decade to look back and say, "Who are those people that are "legitimately achievers and had a significant impact?"

And then you actually had to have a portrait.

Paintings were expensive.

Bronze and marble's really expensive.

Photography changes everything.

Everyone could pretty much afford to get a photograph done, whether you were enslaved, you were a soldier, you were a mother, an immigrant-- name your minority group.

♪ How do we get to where we are today?

In 2001, it was decided that we would actually start collecting living people, and so that's been a bit of a game changer.

There was about 285 portraits back in 1968.

We now have about 26,000 portraits.

♪ So I have to show you this amazing portrait.

This is by Michael Shane Neal of Congressman John Lewis.

It looks like somebody was sketching and then going back in with the paint and didn't quite finish.

He did it deliberately because Congressman Lewis said, "The work of civil rights is still unfinished.

We still have a lot of work to do."

What a beautiful thing to have in a collection called "The Struggle for Justice."

♪ You all have all of these wonderful collections.

What is inside those collections that excite you, and how has that added to the storytelling here at the Portrait Gallery?

I'm only interested in exhibitions that tell us something we didn't know before.

"Brilliant Exiles" tells the story of these 60 remarkable, creative women who felt that they couldn't practice freedom in this country because they were a woman, because of their race, because of their religion.

Between 1900 until 1939, they all go to Paris to find themselves.

♪ They meet all these remarkable artists-- like Picasso, Matisse, Steichen-- and they actually absorb a lot of the ideas of modernism.

This idea that somehow American modernism was something that the men came up with, a whole lot of women were really part of that movement, bringing all those lessons back to America.

I want to show you this amazing self-portrait of an artist called Lois Mailou Jones.

She looks confident, self-assured.

Yeah, and she's looking out at you, right, so this is actually pretty unusual, a woman to look you directly at the eye, let alone an African American woman, but the fact that she's looking out at you and she's like, "I'm an artist," so this was a moment of freedom for her.

She talks about Paris and all of these people watching her paint in the street.

She said, "That would never have happened back home."

Beautiful.

Let me show you some more things.

♪ So look at this amazing-- I know.

I know.

This is-- I'm sure everybody's talking about this one, too.

Yeah.

You know, there's Oprah Winfrey.

She is in her peace garden.

She's holding an olive branch, which, of course, is about peace.

I'm sure you get a lot of foot traffic coming in.

Yes.

This is where we hang, you know, some of our most recent acquisitions.

In fact, when we did the Obama portraits, we had, of course, President Obama was in the presidential gallery... ♪ but Michelle was down here, and she caused such a traffic jam that the guards begged us to take her away.

They were like, "Please take her off the first floor," because nobody could get in the doors.

Wow.

You have a lot of celebrity... Yeah.

in this museum.

Do you chalk that up to a time where celebrity means something?

The question of celebrity is a real challenge.

Who are those people that are legitimately achievers in American culture?

It's also about different fields of endeavor because we'd like the next generation to learn from them.

When you see Jose Andres holding a big box of food surrounded by people after a natural disaster, what is that story telling you?

My big goal, though, in the Portrait Gallery, is that it's not what you look like that matters.

It's what you do that counts.

Absolutely, and you're talking about the idea of portraiture is a visual representation of the individuals who comprise our history and what that looks like.

How do you think the National Portrait Gallery is reshaping the notion of national identity based on that portraiture?

Now we collect video art.

It's a very different way of presenting portraiture.

We have theater.

We have music.

Humans are messy, and so I am very keen to sort of broaden the idea of portraiture to be about sound, smell, taste.

It's complicating it, right, but makes it interesting.

Kim, thank you so much for being on "WETA Arts."

We have really enjoyed this conversation, and we can't wait to see what else comes here to the National Portrait Gallery.

Well, thank you so much.

Please come.

It's your museum.

Curry: Located near the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro, The National Portrait Gallery is open 7 days a week from 11:30 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.

The "Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris" exhibit runs through February 2025, and the museum's podcast "Portraits" invites you to join Kim Sajet as she chats with thought leaders about the real people behind art.

Look for it on your favorite podcast platform.