A new project from the National Portrait Gallery includes the introduction of an annual ‘International Portrait Day’, set to be celebrated on 23 June.
More than 80 participating venues are among the first that will participate, posting portraits from their own collections across their social media channels and encouraging the public to share their own portraits, creating a virtual portrait gallery.
The new day is announced as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s participatory celebration of portraiture, ‘Portrait Mode’, taking place through June and July in anticipation of its reopening on 22 June 2023.
Activities at participating venues will include an exhibition of masterpieces from Chatsworth House at Sotheby’s, The Wallace Collection’s Portraits of Dogs, fashion photography in Ashish: Fall in Love and Be More Tender at the William Morris Gallery and a major exhibition at The Box in Plymouth, marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Venues will foreground portraits in displays and exhibitions, social media, talks and tours, workshops, and competitions.
Organisations already part of the project include the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham and The Beaney in Canterbury. The Leicester Museum and Art Gallery will highlight its portrait of Sir David Attenborough by Bryan Organ, and Cornwall Museums Partnership, will explore and celebrate Cornish portraiture on social media.
Nicholas Cullinan, Director at the National Portrait Gallery said: “We are delighted to be working in an unprecedented collaboration with so many organisations nationally and internationally to all switch into Portrait Mode this summer, and are so grateful for the support of our colleagues as we all come together to celebrate portraiture and the Gallery’s reopening on 22 June.”
