Pauline Cushman

Exhibition through March 20, 2022

NOTE: The National Portrait Gallery will reopen on May 14, 2021, Wednesday–Sunday, 11:30 a.m.–7 p.m. Until then, view exhibit online here.

A number of women rose to national prominence during the Civil War era. Some, such as First Ladies Mary Todd Lincoln and Julia Dent Grant, became public figures when their husbands’ careers thrust them into the spotlight. Others—such as abolitionist Anna Elizabeth Dickinson, actress and theater manager Laura Keene, and Union spy Pauline Cushman—achieved recognition on their own terms. Despite traveling different paths to fame, these women had at least one thing in common: they each visited one of Mathew Brady’s photography studios in New York City or Washington, D.C., and posed for a portrait in the popular, new carte de visite format.