Free-Form Portrait Competition at the Smithsonian: Open to (Almost) All Comers

"National Portrait Gallery Competition"
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery

From the About the Competition page:

"What Is Today's Portrait?

"A portrait can communicate much more than a likeness. Is it a miniature love token? A window to the soul? A captured moment? A negation of personality? And what means do artists use? Pointillist painting? Plasticized sculpture? Pastel drawings? Pixilations? Images based on individual DNA? Psychedelic video?..."

They do get around to what the second Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition is about: "...The competition is open to all professional artists age 18 and over who are living and working in the United States. Both emerging and midcareer artists are invited to participate. Each artist may enter one work depicting anyone—a friend, a stranger, a relative, a self-portrait—but it must be the result of the artist's direct encounter with that person...."

Sounds interesting. I'm not going to enter, though: too many kettles on the stove, for one thing.