The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery presents “Portraits of the World: Denmark,” the third installment in the museum’s international series highlighting the global context of American portraiture. The new exhibition features “Kunstdommere” (Art Judges), Michael Ancher’s monumental 1906 group portrait of his colleagues in a Danish artists’ colony. On loan from The Danish Museum of National History in Hillerød, Denmark, the painting is placed in dialogue with works from the Portrait Gallery’s collection that trace the development of American modernism in artists’ communities in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. The works on view testify to the ways community, friendship and rivalry fueled artistic progress.

The exhibition includes works by Peggy Bacon, George Biddle, Marius de Zaya, Mabel Dwight, Marion D. Freeman, Red Grooms, Hans Namuth, Francis Picabia, John Sloan and Bill Witt. In the spirit of Ancher’s painting, “Kunstdommere” is accompanied by works featuring artists as subjects, including group portraits of Elaine and Willem de Kooning and the trio of Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Tony Smith.