After a 14-month closure when the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery reopens next month, it will showcase a brand-new work. On the museum’s second floor the official photograph of former President Donald J. Trump is following the museum’s “America’s Presidents” awake exhibition and will hang in a selected space reserved for the nation’s most up-to-date former president.
By after that time exhibition is the nation’s only complete collection of official portraits outside the White House. For Time magazine in June 2019 image by award-winning photographer, Pari Dukovic was snapped during a photoshoot, coincidently just a day before Trump officially announced his plans to run for reelection in 2020.
The portrait is described as the former president, clad in a blue suit and trademark red tie, sits at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office with the flags of the U.S. military branches behind him. “Also visible in the background (left) is Asher B. Durand’s portrait of Andrew Jackson (1835), a figure whom President Trump alluded to frequently,” notes the National Portrait Gallery statement, which gives a major surely and mixed review of the Trump presidency.
“During his tenure, Trump appointed a record number of federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices. He brokered the Abraham Accords, significantly restricted immigration, and reduced government regulations. In February 2020, the unemployment rate was a record low at 3.5 percent,”
Continues the statement “he was impeached two times: the first on charges of abusing power and obstruction of Congress and the second for incitement of insurrection. He was acquitted by the Senate in both trials. The beginning of the coronavirus pandemic (Covid-19), which resulted in a devastating loss of human lives and an economic crisis.”
“More Americans voted in the 2020 presidential election than ever before, and the majority elected Joseph R. Biden Jr.,” concludes the gallery’s announcement. “Nevertheless, Trump did not concede, and a mob of his supporters, who refused to accept the results, attacked the U.S. Capitol complex on January 6, 2021, when Congress was working to certify Biden’s win.”
Following the District of Columbia’s Covid-19 guidance a handful of Smithsonian museums including the National Zoo, National Portrait Gallery, American Art Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and National Museum of American History will reopen in May at 50% capacity.