People on the Periphery celebrates the work of David Lenz, whose passionate and intimate depictions of inner-city children, people with disabilities, and rural farmers have made him one of America’s preeminent portrait painters. The artist’s remarkable Photorealist technique enhances the authenticity of his subjects—not portraiture’s traditional powerful and famous sitters but the poor, disabled, and marginalized—those on the periphery of society. Decisive recognition of his talent came in 2006, when Lenz won the Natio nal Portrait Gallery’s first Outwin Boochever Portrait Award. This major retrospective spans three decades of Lenz’s career and includes many paintings that have rarely—or never—been exhibited in public.