A prestigious competition held only once every three years, National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition celebrates excellence in the art of portraiture across all forms of media. This year’s first-prize winner is Brooklyn-based artist Kameron Neal. Neal will receive a $25,000 award and a commission to create a portrait for the museum’s permanent collection for his video installation Down the Barrel (of a Lens), 2023, which places the audience between two screens of declassified New York Police Department surveillance footage filmed between 1960 and 1980. Neal’s installation, alongside 33 other winning works, are on view through August 30 in The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today, hosted by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.
LaToya Hobbs, Erin and Anyah with Hydrangeas, 2023, acrylic and decorative paper on carved wood, 48 x 60 in. Courtesy the artist.
The featured artworks were chosen from more than 3,300 submissions from artists living and working in the United States, and include mediums ranging from painting, photography and sculpture to immersive, time-based media installations.When making their selections, a panel of expert jurors were tasked with looking for a compelling marriage of form and content, technical skill and/or experimentation with mediums; rigorous concepts; attention to the history of the portraiture genre and its possibilities, while considering portraiture in the broadest sense of the word.
Taína Caragol, NGA senior curator of painting and sculpture, comments, “Kameron Neal’s work exemplifies this excellence and raises important questions and thoughts around the intersection of technology, portraiture and surveillance; the individual within the collective or group portrait; the ongoing relevance and nearness of history; the position of the visitor in the installation space; how sound affects an experience and creates an atmosphere for portraiture; and the sheer amount of labor it required to sift through all this footage and isolate moments when someone realizes they are being filmed.”
Sarah Smith, Callie, 2022, oil on canvas, 78 x 66 in. Courtesy the artist and Pt. 2 Gallery, Oakland, CA.
More traditional examples of portraiture also landed among the award winners.
Baltimore-based Katie O’Keefe won for her figurative piece Entwined Repose, a meticulously composed, metaphorically rich combination of freehand machine embroidery and hand embroidery on layered fabric. For the self-described emerging artist, The Outwin 2025 is the largest and most prestigious show she’s ever been a part of. “Being a part of this exhibition has flipped the script from me seeking out opportunities to opportunities seeking out me. Which is a very exciting place to be,” says the artist. In Entwined Repose, O’Keefe says she “sought to capture the history of movement as I toss and turn, searching for a place of comfort. In this act of accepting rest, I find strength in vulnerability. Rest is generally thought of as being a state of inaction, yet for me it takes a significant amount of effort for me to settle my body into restorative rest. Laying still in bed, my body wakes up to the wear and tear I have forced her through during the day but ignored out of fear and necessity.”
Aliza Nisenbaum, Marissa, Pedacito de Sol (Marissa, A Bit of Sunshine), 2023, oil on linen, 571⁄8 x 661⁄8 in. Collection of Aishti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon.
Charlotte Ickes, curator of time-based media art and special projects adds that Entwined Repose “pushes the boundaries of portraiture through the medium it uses—fiber arts—and the very composition and concept of the artwork, which depicts the artist in multiple poses as she tosses and turns while her body settles through the nerve pain caused by chronic Lyme disease, and she’s able to fall asleep…[Many also] think of portraiture as capturing a moment fixed in time, rather than a sequence of moments. Finally, they think of portraiture as relaying what we see of a person, their exterior, while O’Keefe conveys her internal state of pain and restlessness.”
Sandy Rice, Alora—“Dreamer,” 2023, acrylic on wood panel, 24 x 18 in. Courtesy the artist.
Artist Sandy Rice is exploring one of the original forms of the “selfie” in works like Alora—“Dreamer,” an acrylic painting inspired by thumbnail photobooth images from the 1940s and ’50s. “I feel that in making this work I’m resurrecting anonymous figures from the past and honoring them by applying serious study to the nuances of their faces,” explains Rice, adding that working on wood gives the portraits the sepia tone of vintage photos. “The subject of Alora, with her lovely face and intelligent gaze, impressed me with her dignity and poise,” Rice continues. “I’ve owned that photo for over 10 years; I’ve only recently felt that I had acquired the skill to do it justice.”
Katie O’Keefe, Entwined Repose, 2022, freehand machine embroidery and hand embroidery on fabric, 42½ x 63 in. Courtesy the artist.
Ickes points out that Alora translates a found photobooth picture into the medium of acrylic paint on wood through a laborious technical process involving applying onto a panel layer of black-and-white paint, building a relief, and then engraving it with a fine-point blade. “The process is intricate and the focus it requires fosters a deep study of the subject,” she says, “to the point where there is a sense of familiarity that comes through in the artwork, even if the artist and the subject never met.”
View all of the artworks featured in The Outwin: American Portraiture Today at portraitcompetition.si.edu. —
Outwin 2025: American Portraiture today
Through August 30, 2026
National Portrait Gallery
8th Street NW & G Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20002
(202) 633-8300, npg.si.edu
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