Portraits

What exactly is a portrait? As the National Portrait Gallery re-opens and Sheffield Documentary Festival begins, Shahidha Bari talks to the gallery's Chief Curator Alison Smith, film-makers Kim Longinotto and Franky Murray Brown about their film Dalton's Dream, photographer Johny Pitts, whose project Home is Not a Place moves to the Photographers’ Gallery in London and New Generation Thinker Ana Baeza Ruiz about an oral history project with 1970s feminist artists.

Producer: Sofie Vilcins

You can hear music relating to an image held in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery every day on BBC Radio 3's Breakfast programme next week and an episode of the weekly curation of Words and Music inspired by portraits is broadcast on Sunday June 18th and then available on BBC Sounds for a month. On BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds a series called Close Encounters presented by Martha Kearney invites ten leading figures of today to the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery to champion a favourite picture from the Gallery's collection. The NPG re-opens after refurbishment on June 22nd 2023. The NPG has linked up with Creative Southampton to open a show at Southampton City Art Gallery and Museums: which is a follow up to a project run by the NPG with Sheffield Galleries. Joshua Reynolds' birth on July 16th 1723 is being marked by an exhibition in the city of his birth at the Box Plymouth which runs until October 29th

Johny Pitts' work has been on show in Sheffield, Edinburgh and is now opening at the Photographers Gallery London this June. The Sheffield Doc Festival runs June 14th to 19th premiering a host of films, tv and podcasts which will be coming your way soon. The screenings include Dalton's Dream on 15th June, by Kim Longinotto and Franky Murray Brown, which tracks the journey of the first non-British and Black man to win X-Factor UK and the new life which follows Blood & Fire: Our Journey Through Vanley Burke's History runs at Soho House in Birmingham until Nov 4th 2023