With brightly-colored graffiti murals lining the gallery hallways, and riffs on 17th century Dutch painting, the National Portrait Gallery has brought a breath of fresh air to the often traditional Smithsonian Institution. Last Friday, just weeks after hanging the Stephen Colbert portrait, the NPG opened RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture, a show that’s bound to appeal to a wide-ranging audience. But RECOGNIZE! isn’t only about trying to bring a younger audience to a museum — the works on display are powerful evocations of American culture that have a broad appeal both in terms of message and artistic merit. From subtle black and white hip hop performance shots by David Sheinbaum to an ode by poet Nikki Giovanni illustrated with an installation by Shinique Smith, the exhibit captures and gives insight into a cultural movement that is essential to understanding American culture.

RECOGNIZE! is part of the Portraiture Now series, which focuses on contemporary artists and new ways of making portraits. This exhibit helps illustrate these parameters — Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp are graffiti artists, who write under a pseudonym, or a “tag.” As the wall text explains, a tag is like a self-portrait, and artists perform “without a public audience.” Their portraits may not be traditional, but they’re a vibrant statement about contemporary life.

The portraits by Kehinde Wiley all but steal the show — Wiley depicts Ice T as Napoleon in the famous Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painting of the emperor. Ice T wields a scepter and sits on a robe, but wears a baseball cap in lieu of a crown. There’s also a portrait of LL Cool J in which he’s sitting in a chair against a patterned backdrop that is characteristic of Wiley’s paintings. The portrait is based on the John Singer Sargent portrait of John D. Rockefeller, because LL thinks of himself as a modern-day Rockefeller.