The National Portrait Gallery tells the history of America through individuals who have shaped our culture. Through the visual arts, performing arts and new media, the Portrait Gallery portrays poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives tell the American story. It is located, along with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture in downtown Washington, DC. The building is one of the city's oldest and formerly housed the U.S. Patent Office.