Today in Smithsonian History: September 21, 1978

Harold Pfister, program management officer in charge of the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibit “Facing the Light: Historic American Portrait Daguerreotypes,” and William F. Stapp, NPG’s curator of photographs, examine some of the pieces featured in the exhibition. (As featured in the Torch, September 1978)

September 21, 1978 The National Portrait Gallery opens its first research exhibition in photography, entitled Facing the Light: Historic American Portrait Daguerreotypes, featuring a selection of daguerreotype portraits of politicians, writers, soldiers, etc. including John Brown, Henry Clay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Abraham Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, and others.

Congress passed legislation in January 1976 allowing the National Portrait Gallery to collect portraits in media other than graphic arts, thus permitting NPG to began collecting photographs. NPG rapidly expanded its photography collection, and in October 1976 established a Department of Photographs.

From the catalog for “Facing the Light: Historic American Portrait Daguerrotypes” by Harold Francis Pfister. Smithsonian Institution, Washington (1978)

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives

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