For years, the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum seemed destined to live in the shadow of Washington's better known museums.
People may have been vaguely aware that Gilbert Stuart's depiction of George Washington hung at the Portrait Gallery (and most left it at that), while the paintings and sculptures at the American Art Museum rarely attracted the attention enjoyed by their flashier counterparts at the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection or the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
