The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery has announced Gloriann Sacha Antonetty-Lebrón of Carolina, Puerto Rico, and Juan Pablo Vizcaíno of Loíza, Puerto Rico, as winners of the People’s Choice Award for the museum’s 2025 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Held every three years, the Portrait Gallery’s juried, national competition results in an exhibition highlighting the latest in contemporary portraiture from across the United States and its territories. As part of the competition, viewers—in person and online—were able to vote digitally for their favorite portrait in “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” exhibition. Antonetty-Lebrón and Vizcaíno’s winning work, “Hebras y Vejigantes,” is one of 34 portraits in “The Outwin 2025” on view in Washington, D.C., through Aug. 30.
The 12-channel video shows the tradition of “vejigante” mask carving from the Puerto Rican town of Loíza, which has a large population of descendants of free Black people and maroons who escaped enslavement during the Spanish colonial era. Against a soundtrack of flutes and “bomba” drumming, 13 individuals dressed in kente cloth and African wax prints stand tall while expressing themselves in ways that honor their Afro-Caribbean heritage, from braiding hair and spinning records to reading and dancing. Each activity takes place as Antonetty-Lebrón recites an ode to Black hair and Vizcaíno carves masks for the individuals in the video.
Past recipients of the People’s Choice Award include James Seward (2006), Margaret Bowland (2009), Saeri Kiritani (2013), Adrián Román (“Viajero”) (2016), ADÁL (2019) and Elsa María Meléndez (2022). “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” is co-curated by the competition’s director, Taína Caragol, who is the Portrait Gallery’s senior curator of painting and sculpture, and Charlotte Ickes, the Portrait Gallery’s curator of time-based media art and special projects.
The competition and exhibition are made possible by the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition Endowment, which was established by Virginia Outwin Boochever, a longtime docent at the National Portrait Gallery. The endowment is sustained by her family.
National Portrait Gallery
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