Photos from National Portrait Gallery’s Hip Hop Portraiture Show for Your Web Use

January 11, 2008

Photos from National Portrait Gallery’s Hip Hop Portraiture Show for Your Web Use

Mule by Jefferson Pinder

8 mm film transferred to digital video, 2006
Jefferson Pinder, courtesy of G Fine Art; © Jefferson Pinder

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery got caught by surprise when they discovered hip hop bloggers posting hi-resolution images from the upcoming RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture show.

I spoke with NPG’s Bethany Bentley who told me that they did not intend for the hi-res images to go online due to agreements with artists. But they are happy to send out lo-res images for folks that will use them to publicize the show. The truth is they haven’t gotten this online response before so it’s part of their learning curve.

I want to say that Ms. Bentley was very open and straightforward and she also gave me permission to post all the photos below in lo-res, web ready form and let people know that you can download them from here for use on your site as long as you do the two following things:
1) credit the artist
2) link to the show

Here’s the link to the NPG site for RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture:
http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/recognize/visit.html

If you do pick these up here, I’d love a link back but the main thing is to give the artists and the National Portrait Gallery props. I think if bloggers, in particular, work with such institutions when we can, it will lead to us getting more cool stuff in the long run.

To contact Bethany Bentley:
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
+1-202-633-8293