The National Arts Club (NAC) is thrilled to launch its 2025–26 season with Influence and Identity | Twentieth Century Portrait Photography from the Bank of America Collection. This special exhibition, on view at the NAC’s landmark building on Gramercy Park in New York City, has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in Our Communities® program. It includes 83 photographs by international photographers and master portraitists spanning from the 1920s to the 1960s, a period often called the golden age of photography. From Marilyn Monroe to Winston Churchill to Miles Davis, the show features portraits of legendary figures in the arts, politics, and society during a vibrant era of history.
Notably, Influence and Identity includes photographs of Salvador Dalí, recipient of the NAC’s 1957 Medal of Honor for Fine Arts; Inge Morath, recipient of the NAC’s 1999 Medal of Honor for Photography; and Alfred Stieglitz, who in 1902, curated a landmark show at the National Arts Club which helped launch the Photo-Secession movement.
The show also features works by portraitists such as Antony Armstrong-Jones, Richard Avedon, Yousuf Karsh, and Gisèle Freund, as well as renowned photographers Berenice Abbott, Imogen Cunningham, and Brassaï. Using a medium born of the modern age, these artists produced images that captured the commanding personalities of their noteworthy subjects and have come to define the era’s photographic portraiture.
Influence and Identity is free and open to the public Monday through Friday, from 9am to 3pm, and Saturday and Sunday, from 10am to 4pm.
For a full list of events and to learn more, please visit nacnyc.org.
Founded in 1898, the National Arts Club is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate all people in the fine arts. Annually, the club offers more than 150 free programs to the public, including exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, and lectures and readings, attracting an audience of more than 25,000 members of the general public.
