Beyoncé is going to be hanging around the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.
Tyler Mitchell’s photograph of the pop icon, which appeared in Vogue last September, will one day adorn a wall at the Washington, D.C. museum.
“A year ago today we broke the flood gates open,” Mitchell recalled in an Instagram post. “Since then it was important to spend the whole year running through them making sure every piece of the gate was knocked down.
“And now I’m glad to share this picture is being acquired into the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection.”
A comment from the Smithsonian, accompanied by a bee emoji, reads: “We look forward to adding this new work to our collection.”
In a message accompanying the photo in Vogue, Beyoncé wrote: “When I first started, 21 years ago, I was told that it was hard for me to get onto covers of magazines because black people did not sell. Clearly that has been proven a myth. Not only is an African American on the cover of the most important month for Vogue, this is the first ever Vogue cover shot by an African American photographer.”
Mitchell, now 24, was also the youngest photographer to do the honours. He went on to shoot Zendaya for the May 2019 issue of Vogue.
The National Portrait Gallery, which has more than 23,000 portraits, said it does not know when Mitchell’s photo of Beyoncé will be put on display to the public.