The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery unveiled a commissioned portrait of Oprah Winfrey, who attended the ceremony in D.C. on Wednesday, with a number of her friends by her side.

The nearly 7-foot-tall portrait is now on display on the Portrait Gallery’s first floor, near the museum’s G Street NW entrance, and will remain on view until October 2024, when the Smithsonian will place it in storage. The oil-on-canvas painting depicts Winfrey smiling and standing in her private prayer garden at her home in Montecito, Calif., donning a purple taffeta gown. (An Oprah-produced musical remake of The Color Purple comes out in theaters on Christmas day.)

Fighting back tears, Winfrey described the “still small voice” she heard as a child standing on a back porch with her grandmother in rural Mississippi, where she had no running water or electricity. It’s a voice that led her to this day, she said, just a month before her 70th birthday — as she joined the ranks of greats like Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Ida B. Wells, who all have portraits at the gallery.

“I learned to lean into [that voice] and to understand that God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can ever dream for yourself,” Winfrey said. “Because of all the dreams that I had, I didn’t even know there was a national gallery. I didn’t know there was a national gallery to dream and aspire to and for. And so I am living and breathing God’s dream for me this day.”

Chicago-based artist Shawn Michael Warren created the painting and says he first met with Winfrey over two years ago. Oprah had not seen the work until it was revealed Wednesday. Warren helped paint a mural of Winfrey in 2020 in Chicago, near the studios where she filmed The Oprah Winfrey Show for more than two decades. After a five-year selection process, Winfrey chose Warren to be the portrait artist in 2021.

Warren grew up in Chicago watching Winfrey’s show, he said, so the moment felt full circle. “This portrait you see before you today is the completed arc of a true Chicago story,” he said.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a proclamation Wednesday congratulating Warren on behalf of the District.

“When you and I had our first conversation two and a half years ago,” Warren said, addressing Winfrey, “I asked you something that caused you to pause and ponder: How did you want to be depicted to the generations that don’t exist yet? I thank you for being sensitive and aware of the enormity of this endeavor and letting that question resonate with you.”

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch took the opportunity to speak about Winfrey’s impact on American society.

“Oprah has never run out of ideas, nor has she ever tempered her commitment to use her creativity to make us all better,” Bunch said. “Oprah used television as a tool to help change the country. Her shows promoted literacy through her book clubs, enabled important cultural and personal conversations, and inspired generations of young women and people of color to change the world they live in.”

Over the past 30 years, the gallery has commissioned just 35 other portraits of living sitters for its permanent collection, beginning with former president George H.W. Bush in 1994. Winfrey joins public figures like Anthony Fauci, José Andrés, Jeff Bezos, Barack and Michelle Obama, Venus and Serena Williams, and Ava DuVernay, who’ve all had portraits done by contemporary artists in recent years.

DuVernay and Gayle King were among the celebrities and media personalities present at Wednesday’s ceremony, where Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch introduced Winfrey alongside the museum’s director Kim Sajet.

Winfrey said she wants to encourage younger generations to lead with love, hope, and forgiveness in an ever changing world.

Quoting a poem Maya Angelou personally wrote for her, Winfrey concluded the event by saying, “I want you to know that that is exactly what I intend to do: to continue to astonish a mean world with my acts of kindness.”