The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. has mounted its first ever show examining the influence of hip hop culture on America featuring paintings, photography and videos.

RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture will be on view at the National Portrait Gallery through October this year.

A painting of rapper LL Cool J by Kehinde Wiley is part of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibit 'RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture,' in Washington, D.C.
(Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)

Four massive graffiti murals, commissioned by the museum, introduce visitors to the exhibit. Artists Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp use the lettering styles of the 1980s in their murals to show the history of graffiti and its place in hip hop culture.

Fans can see portraits of their favourite artists, including Ice T, Grandmaster Flash, Phar Cyde, De La Soul and the Furious Five.

"What this exhibition is trying to do is re-centre hip hop as one of the key cultural achievements of the last 20 to 30 years," said Frank Goodyear, one of the exhibit's curators.

Goodyear cautions that the exhibit should not be seen as a comprehensive history of hip hop but more of a highlight.

LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Mos Def featured

Some of the portraits are done in an old-fashioned style. For instance, the portrait of LL Cool J, born James Todd Smith, was originally commissioned by network VH1 for their 2005 Hip hop Honours.

VH1 asked New York artist Kehinde Wiley to take on the project. Wiley is known for posing anonymous black men as saints or monarchs, done in grand style.

"Wiley takes a black man — a subject who had only been on the margins of historical grand portraiture — and puts that man squarely in the centre of the tradition and gives that visual power to his anonymous subject," notes curator Brandon Fortune.

Wiley poses LL Cool J in the same way as John D. Rockefeller's 1917 portrait. The only difference is that the rapper is wearing a ball cap.

Other portraits include photographs by New Mexico artist David Scheinbaum of hip hop groups and artists such as Public Enemy, Mos Def and Supernatural.

Several videos by artists weave imagery from black history along with hip hop styles.

"There's nothing marginal about hip hop," Goodyear said. "Hip hop is at the centre of our culture."

With files from the Associated Press