Stephen Colbert is so hot, he’s on fire.
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Well, sort of. So many folks crowded into the National Portrait Gallery Thursday night to hear Public Affairs officer Bethany Bentley discuss the popular portrait of “Comedy Central” star Stephen Colbert, that security had to interrupt the presentation in order to tell the crowd that they were actually a fire hazard. “Please clear the walk way!” said one guard.
Looks like the Colbert Nation just can’t be stopped.
And it’s apparently yielding results: the Gallery’s decision back in January to hang Colbert’s portrait above the second floor water fountain has increased attendance 20 percent since the portrait’s hanging, and 33 percent in January alone. Some of the staff at the gallery have actually gotten frustrated with how the portrait’s location (near the bathrooms/utility closet) causes crowds where the janitors need to get supplies and trash cans. But by far the funniest anecdote involved a college student who wrote the gallery to say that he would rather come see the portrait than go to Miami for spring break.
Bentley provided a brief but thorough history of the portrait, recalling the well-known story that “The Colbert Report” called the Gallery and asked to donate the portrait and film segments about Colbert’s “quest to become an American treasure,” which aired in January. She also explained that the piece was written before the writers’ strike, which provided the Colbert staff ample time to film their segments.
The gallery originally agreed to a two-week trial period to hang the portrait with the option to extend it if popularity warranted. It did: The first day the portrait hung in the gallery, some 300 people came to see it during the lunch hour alone. This lead to the gallery to decide to leave the portrait up for six weeks, breaking their long-standing rule that a subject had to be dead for ten years before being considered for a portrait.has lead them to reconsider that policy.
When the portrait finally comes down — scheduled to be on April 1st — it will have been in the gallery for some two and a half months.
When asked if the date — April Fool’s Day — had anything to do with the decision to remove the portrait, Bentley coyly replied “absolutely.”
(Photo: Getty Images)
And, for those of you who just can’t get enough of Stephen Colbert, here are some photos of Friday’s “caucus” at the Verizon Center, in which elephants from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus picked which candidate they want in the White House (Colbert won!).
(Photos: Carrie Devorah)
