In 2025, the American museum landscape is brimming with exhibitions that dig deep into the evolving language of photography and portraiture. As artists continue to experiment with identity, history, and technology, these exhibitions are more than visual showcases—they’re mirrors to society’s most pressing questions.

From iconic retrospectives to genre-defying contemporary showcases, museums across the U.S. are hosting landmark presentations this year. Whether you’re in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, or elsewhere, 2025 promises an unparalleled opportunity to see how image-making is shaping the cultural imagination.

This blog serves as your comprehensive guide to the essential U.S. exhibitions this year centered around photography and portraiture—focusing not only on what to see but why it matters.

Amy Sherald: American Sublime

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (April 9 – August 10, 2025)

National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (Opening September 19, 2025)

Few artists have redefined portraiture in recent years like Amy Sherald. With her painterly style that often blurs photography’s realism with the emotionality of classical painting, Sherald captures the complexity and grace of Black American life. “American Sublime” is her largest retrospective to date, tracing her rise from regional shows to national acclaim. Her subjects, posed with deliberate formality, gaze back with quiet dignity—each painting a dialogue on identity, race, and visibility.

This exhibit will travel, starting in New York before settling in the heart of Washington, D.C., allowing multiple regions of the U.S. to engage with her politically resonant and aesthetically elegant work. It’s not just a highlight of the year—it’s a cultural marker of where portraiture is headed.

New Photography 2025: Lines of Belonging

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City (September 14, 2025 – January 17, 2026)

Marking the 40th anniversary of MoMA’s pioneering “New Photography” series, “Lines of Belonging” brings together emerging photographers from around the globe whose work interrogates the construction of identity, memory, and borders. Curated by Roxana Marcoci and Oluremi C. Onabanjo, this iteration reflects a generational reckoning with the past and future of photography.

Expect everything from analog processes revived in surprising ways to immersive multimedia installations. These are artists rethinking what photography can be—from personal cartographies to abstract manipulations of form. “Lines of Belonging” is more than an exhibition; it’s a forecast of the next decade of photographic practice.

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (March 5 – July 28, 2025)

This groundbreaking exhibition explores how portraiture and photography helped articulate a global Black modernist identity during the Harlem Renaissance. With works by James Van Der Zee, Augusta Savage, and others, the show positions Harlem’s artists within a broader international context, linking them with European modernist circles and diasporic exchanges in Paris, Lagos, and London.

Photographic documentation plays a central role here—not only capturing faces and fashions but serving as a political tool for empowerment. Rare archival footage, personal snapshots, and studio portraits bring to life a world where Black artists were agents of cultural transformation.

Diana Markosian: Santa Barbara

High Museum of Art, Atlanta (June 15 – October 5, 2025)

Diana Markosian’s deeply personal work often blurs documentary photography and narrative film. In “Santa Barbara,” she reconstructs her childhood journey from post-Soviet Russia to the U.S., drawing parallels between her life and the 1980s American soap opera of the same name. Featuring staged sets, scripted reenactments, and intimate family photos, this exhibition is a hybrid memoir that explores the immigrant gaze, familial sacrifice, and cultural assimilation.

It’s one of the most innovative uses of photography in exhibition form—an essay in images where personal memory collides with cinematic fantasy.

Face Time: A Century of Self-Portraiture in Photography

Getty Center, Los Angeles (July 22 – November 2, 2025)

“Face Time” at the Getty delves into one of photography’s most enduring forms: the self-portrait. Spanning from early 20th-century pioneers like Claude Cahun to contemporary artists such as Zanele Muholi and Cindy Sherman, the exhibition explores how artists have used self-portraiture to confront beauty norms, gender, race, and technology.

With the rise of smartphones and social media, the self-portrait has gone from a private practice to a public performance. This show traces that evolution, posing critical questions about authorship, agency, and the performance of self in an image-saturated age.

Carrie Mae Weems: Strategies of Engagement

The Broad, Los Angeles (October 4, 2025 – March 1, 2026)

Carrie Mae Weems continues to be one of the most profound voices in American art. Known for her potent combination of photography, text, and installation, Weems uses portraiture not just to depict people but to enact change. “Strategies of Engagement” focuses on her work from the 1990s onward, including her famed “Kitchen Table Series” and newer projects tackling systemic injustice, Black maternal mortality, and historical amnesia.

This is not a passive viewing experience. Every photo is a call to reflect—and often, to act.

Richard Avedon: The American Portrait

Art Institute of Chicago (August 2 – December 1, 2025)

Richard Avedon’s stark black-and-white portraits redefined American fashion and culture. With his signature white backdrop and confrontational compositions, Avedon captured everyone from Marilyn Monroe to migrant workers with the same unsparing gaze.

This retrospective brings together over 100 of his most iconic portraits alongside rarely seen contact sheets and personal notes. It’s a chance to see not just the images that made magazine covers, but the decision-making and humanity behind them. In an era of curated perfection, Avedon’s work feels more relevant than ever.

Intimate Truths: Portraits of the Queer South

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (July 12 – November 10, 2025)

Photography has long served as a medium for marginal voices, and this exhibition brings visibility to queer life in the American South. “Intimate Truths” is a group show featuring work by photographers like Zora J. Murff, Jess T. Dugan, and Elle Pérez, who document love, longing, isolation, and kinship in deeply personal terms.

It’s an act of archival urgency and quiet rebellion, revealing a rich emotional landscape that resists stereotypes and embraces nuance.

Nan Goldin: This Will Not End Well

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (May 1 – September 21, 2025)

Nan Goldin’s diaristic photography and slideshow installations capture intimacy in its rawest form. From the New York underground to the struggles of opioid addiction, Goldin has chronicled communities often ignored by mainstream culture.

“This Will Not End Well” is a sweeping retrospective of her slide shows and video installations. It includes her acclaimed piece “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” and her more recent activism-driven work addressing pharmaceutical companies and corporate accountability. Goldin’s voice remains urgent, unsanitized, and fiercely human.

Native Lens: Photography by Indigenous Artists

Denver Art Museum (September 5, 2025 – January 11, 2026)

This landmark exhibition showcases photography by Native American and First Nations artists who challenge dominant narratives of indigeneity. With works spanning from the 1970s to the present, “Native Lens” reveals how photography is used for reclamation, documentation, and future-making.

Featured artists include Wendy Red Star, Tom Jones, and Cara Romero, whose vibrant portraits and staged scenes offer a counter-archive to colonial depictions. It’s a necessary reframing of both history and the role of the camera in shaping it.

Beyond the Frame: Why These Exhibitions Matter

Portraiture and photography aren’t just about aesthetics—they’re about presence. They ask: Who is seen? Who is allowed to look? What does it mean to hold someone’s image, or to hold your own?

In a time when digital manipulation and surveillance technologies have complicated our relationships to images, these exhibitions return us to the core of visual truth and subjectivity. Whether it’s Sherald’s dignified sitters or Markosian’s fabricated childhood scenes, these shows ask us to slow down and reckon with what a face tells us.

Moreover, many of these exhibitions coincide with rising public interest in justice, inclusivity, and historical redress. Photography becomes both document and weapon—an archive of pain, joy, transformation, and protest.

Tips for Visitors

• Plan ahead: Many of these shows are touring or timed-ticketed. Check museum websites for dates and reservations.
• Pair with talks/workshops: Many institutions are offering panel discussions and artist talks alongside the exhibitions.
• Explore related collections: Museums often pair these shows with adjacent programming—from film screenings to print viewing hours.
• Follow museum social media: For updates, behind-the-scenes previews, and live-streamed events.

Closing Frame

As 2025 unfolds, photography and portraiture remind us that we are never just viewers—we are participants in the stories told through lenses. These exhibitions, scattered across the country but unified in purpose, are windows into our shared humanity. They are not just about who we are—they’re about who we can become when we truly see each other.

Make space in your calendar—and your heart—to witness them.

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