The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is proud to present the winners and finalists of the 2025 Teen Portrait Competition!

Matilda Myers of Maryland and Kate Stermer of California have been announced as winners of the 2025 Teen Portrait Competition, a triennial event inspired by the museum’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The teen competition is open to students between the ages of 13 and 17 who reside in the United States and its territories. Ten finalists were selected from the 13 to 15 age group, and nine finalists were selected from the 16 to 17 age group. The selected works showcase the next wave of contemporary portraiture by teens. Myers received the top prize from the 13–15 age group, and Stermer from the 16–17 age group. The photographs by the 19 finalists will be on view in a video presentation on the second floor of the National Portrait Gallery from January 24 through August 30, 2026.

Teens were invited to submit their photographic portraits through an anonymous open call. The museum received more than 1,100 entries from students in 48 states, Guam, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. The photographs were reviewed by the Teen Museum Council, a group of high school students from Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia who aim to learn about museum careers while building a community for teens with interactive programs and events inspired by the Portrait Gallery’s collection. The council narrowed the submissions to 40 semi-finalists. Three members of the council, joined by artist Caitlin Teal Price, who is based in Washington, D.C., and New York, juried the competition’s final round to select the exhibiting artists and name the prizewinners.

Myers’ photograph, Rest, compares the masculine and feminine by showing a ballerina resting with a pickaxe. Stermer’s black-and-white portrait, titled The cost of conformity, depicts a teenage girl as a puppeteer manipulating the markers of success (cars) with marionette strings. Photographs by all 19 finalists prompt conversations about identity through the eyes of teens in the United States, and they address topical issues including tradition, mental health and sibling relationships. The photographs will be on view alongside the museum’s triennial The outwin 2025: American portraiture today exhibition, featuring finalists of the 2025 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition by artists 18 and older.