David C. Ward

After a long and productive career, in April 2017 David C. Ward retired as Senior Historian at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution where he Has curated exhibitions and wrote and lectured widely on subjects in American history and culture. He is now working as a consultant and independent scholar, most recently on the reinstallation of the museum at the US Capitol.

Ward closed his career at the Smithsonian by reinstalling the exhibition of America’s Presidents and Curated exhibitions on Alexander Gardner, the photographer, and the American working class. Previously, he was co-curator (with Jonathan D. Katz) of the award winning and controversial exhibition Hide/Seek. Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (2010-12. He also organized Poetic Likeness. Portraits of Modern American Poets (2012) and co-curated Face Value. Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction (2014). In addition, Ward did special exhibitions on Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln, among others. With graduate degrees from Warwick University (England) and Yale, he is the author of Charles Willson Peale. Art and Selfhood in the Early Republic (2004) and has co-edited four volumes of the selected papers of Charles Willson Peale and his family.

In addition to his work at the Smithsonian, Ward is a poet and literary critic. He has published a small book of his poems, called Internal Difference, and in 2014 a larger collection, called Call Waiting was published by Carcanet Press (England). He writes the "Poetry Matters" column for Smithsonian Magazine.