WASHINGTON.- The National Portrait Gallery reopens after extensive renovations with a series of great exhibits. “Americans Now,” drawn from the Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection, will feature individuals prominent in sports, entertainment and other fields of endeavor during the last 25 years. It also will reflect the variety of media the Gallery is now collecting and address the museum’s newly established policy of accepting living subjects into the collection.

“Portraiture Now” is a series of changing exhibitions focusing on contemporary artists who have made portraiture the subject of their recent work. The inaugural exhibition in this series will feature painter William Beckman, photographers Dawoud Bey and Andres Serrano, sculptor Nina Levy, and video artist Jason Salavon, whose work demonstrates the wide range of approaches to portraiture today.

“Eye Contact,” will showcase masterpieces of 20th century portraiture from the National Portrait Gallery’s drawing collections. The bold, contemporary engagement between one person and another that the term “eye contact” implies will be evident in the ambitious watercolors, drawings and pastels assembled in this exhibition.

The “Gifts to the Nation” display will highlight gifts to the National Portrait Gallery’s collection since the gallery’s exhibit spaces closed in 2000. People portrayed in the exhibition will include musician Ray Charles, mezzo soprano Denyce Graves, labor leader David Dubinsky and Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist Selman Waksman.

The “One Life: Walt Whitman, a kosmos” exhibit will be on the first floor, the same floor where Whitman worked in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.Each year, a gallery within the museum will be devoted to a curator’s exploration of the life of one individual. David Ward, a Portrait Gallery historian and himself a poet, selected Walt Whitman as the subject for this first exhibition in the series because Whitman, he says, “influenced a century of America’s foremost writers and artists.” Whitman’s images and personal memorabilia will be coupled with his words to create a visual portrait.

The “Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2006” will feature the work of 51 artists selected as finalists in the Portrait Gallery’s first national portrait competition. Named for Virginia Outwin Boochever, a former docent whose generous gift endowed this program, the competition will showcase the variety and excellence of contemporary portraiture in painting and sculpture. Winners will be highlighted in the exhibition, and visitors will have an opportunity to vote for their choice of best portrait. The competition will be repeated triennially.

A new gallery adjacent to “America’s Presidents” will be devoted to exhibitions on presidential themes. The first will be “The Presidency and the Cold War.” During the second half of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a global struggle. Beginning with FDR, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at Yalta and ending with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, this exhibition will explore how U.S. presidents shaped or reacted to the events of the age. Video clips from the period, narrated by Brian Williams, add another dimension to the exhibit.

The “Temple of Invention: The History of a National Landmark” exhibition honors the museum’s historic home on the 170th anniversary of its cornerstone being laid by President Andrew Jackson and the completion of its glorious renovation. Begun in 1836 and completed in 1868, it was the third public building constructed by the new nation in its capital city. This landmark was praised by Walt Whitman as the “noblest of Washington buildings” and is considered to be one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the United States.

As if this wasn´t enough, the National Portrait Gallery will open six permanent exhibits the first of which is “America’s Presidents”. The nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, this exhibition lies at the heart of the Portrait Gallery’s mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it. Visitors will see an enhanced and extended display of multiple images of 42 presidents of the United States, including Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington, the famous “cracked plate” photograph of Abraham Lincoln and whimsical sculptures of Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush by noted caricaturist Pat Oliphant. Presidents Washington, Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt will be given expanded attention because of their significant impact on the office. Presidents from FDR to Bill Clinton are featured in a video component of the exhibit.

“American Origins, 1600-1900” will be on view in a series of 17 galleries and alcoves chronologically arranged to take the visitor from the days of contact between Native Americans and European explorers through the struggles of independence to the Gilded Age. Major figures from Pocahontas to Chief Joseph, Alexander Hamilton to Henry Clay, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Harriet Beecher St owe will be among those included. Three of the galleries will be devoted exclusively to the Civil War, examining this conflict in depth. A group of modern photographic prints produced from Mathew Brady’s original negatives will complement the exhibition. Highlights from the Gallery’s remarkable collection of daguerreotypes, the earliest practical form of photography, will be on view in “American Origins,” making the National Portrait Gallery the first major museum to create a permanent exhibition space for daguerreotype portraits of historically significant Americans.

Jo Davidson: Biographer in Bronze” presents fourteen portraits in bronze and terra-cotta made by renowned American sculptor Jo Davidson between 1908 and 1946 include depictions of Gertrude Stein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist John Marin and Lincoln Steffens.

Four newly created galleries opening onto the museum’s magnificent third-floor Great Hall will showcase the major cultural, scientific and political figures of the 20th century. From the reform movements of the first two decades to the movements for social justice and civil rights of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and from the Great Depression to the Vietnam era and beyond, visitors can explore the never-ending struggle to attain the American goal of justice for all in the exhibit “Twentieth-Century Americans”.

"Bravo!" will showcase the composers and performers who brought the performing arts to life from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Collaborative performances such as John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn in "Rooster Cogburn" and Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland in a People's Concert are featured in a video component of the show.

“Champions” is a salute to the dynamic American sports figures whose impact has extended beyond their sports and made them a part of the larger story of our nation. A lively combination of portraits, artifacts and memorabilia and video will enhance the exhibition. Video clips of the famous athletes in the exhibit are narrated by Michael Wilbon of ESPN and The Washington Post.