Explore Art & Design

Find out which artists were born on your birthday or in any year in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collections.

Multimedia artist Iké Udé celebrates the luminescent beauty and mystique of African visionaries by turning his lens on the talented people who drive Nollywood, Nigeria’s $3 billion film industry. Known for his performative and iconoclastic style and vibrant sense of composition, Udé’s photographs use color, attire and other markers to make elegant yet unexpected portraits. His photographs make a bold statement about the power of African identities, despite centuries of attempted erasure by Eurocentric art history and notions of beauty.

Art, biography, history, and identity collide in this podcast from the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Join Director Kim Sajet as she chats with artists, historians, and thought leaders about the big and small ways that portraits shape our world. 

Explore some of the Smithsonian’s most treasured objects