Washington, DC—The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery announced an open call for submissions to its seventh triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The submission period is from October 2, 2023, through January 26, 2024.
Established in 2006, the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition invites artists (ages 18 and over) to submit one portrait created in the past three years for consideration by a panel of experts. Entrants must live as well as work in the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa or the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Selected artworks, including three prize winners, are featured in a museum exhibition. The Outwin 2022: American Portraiture Today exhibit will travel to the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, November 3–January 21, 2024, as well as the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, February 17, 2024–May 5, 2024. 
Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition
The competition focuses on broadening the definition of portraiture. It also highlights the genre’s wider relevance to society within the field of contemporary art. Further, it aims to bring together works that speak to the country’s diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and other conditions that shape a person’s individual and collective identities.
The first-prize winner receives $25,000 and a commission to portray a remarkable living American for the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. Additional prizes in the amounts of $10,000 and $7,500 are awarded to second- and third-place winners, respectively.
Selected artworks will form The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today exhibition. It will go on display at the Portrait Gallery from April 26, 2025, through February 22, 2026. Following, it will travel to other cities in the United States.
Held every three years, the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition has accelerated participants’ careers. First-prize winners of the triennial competition include David Lenz (2006), Dave Woody (2009), Bo Gehring (2013), Amy Sherald (2016), Hugo Crosthwaite (2019) and Alison Elizabeth Taylor (2022). In addition, works from the triennial’s sixth edition, including Taylor’s winning Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning, are on view here.
Anthony Cuts under the Williamsburg Bridge, Morning
Furthermore, the portrait competition is organized by the National Portrait Gallery. Taína Caragol, curator of painting, sculpture and Latinx art and history, is the director of the 2025 competition.
The portrait competition welcomes all media. This includes painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, printmaking, textiles, video, performance as well as digital or time-based media. Artworks may originate from direct encounters between the artist and the sitter. Or they may draw on earlier references, such as art historical images or archival sources. Portraits may also be of individuals or groups. Eligible artists must submit entries electronically through the online submission site. Visit the website for complete instructions and details.
Competition Jurors
Additionally, for each competition, the museum selects four professionals from outside the museum (critics, art historians, artists) and three members of its staff to serve as jurors. Guest jurors for this competition are Carla Acevedo-Yates, the Marilyn and Larry Fields curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Huey Copeland, the BFC presidential associate professor of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; LaToya Ruby Frazier, artist; and Daniel Lind-Ramos, artist.
Moreover, the portrait gallery cocurators of the Outwin 2025 exhibition, Caragol and Charlotte Ickes, curator of time-based media art and special projects, will serve on the jury. Rhea L. Combs, the museum’s director of curatorial affairs, will also serve as a juror.
The Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Endowment make the competition as well as exhibition possible. Virginia Outwin Boochever, a longtime docent at the National Portrait Gallery, established the competition. Currently, the endowment is sustained by her family.
National Portrait Gallery
The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery tells the multifaceted story of the United States through the individuals who have shaped American culture. Spanning the visual arts, performing arts and new media, it portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, as well as actors and activists whose lives tell the nation’s story. The National Portrait Gallery is located at Eighth and G streets N.W., Washington, DC.
