Americans portray the presidents.

PositionVarious artists, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Fifty-six ingeniously concocted, often endearing, and occasionally surprising portraits made as gifts for 12 presidents--from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton--are on exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. James Barber, curator of the exhibition, selected the portraits from the collections of the various presidential libraries, the White House, and the National Archives. "Many of these gifts represent individual efforts to brush shoulders with the president," he points out. "By giving these gifts, they make a mark on history."

The object range is size from a four-foot-high papier mache sculpture of Frnaklin Delano Roosevelt as the Great Sphinx to a likeness of Richard Nixon carved on a grain of rice. They employ all manner of materials--animal, vegetable, and mineral; natural and man-made--including rocks, pipe cleaners, leather, ribbons, plastic, beans, and postage stamps,

One portrait of Ronal Reagan rendered in...

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