The National Portrait Gallery in London has acquired a portrait of pop star Charli XCX by British photographer Harley Weir. The photograph, which was shot in 2024, will be added to the museum’s collection this week. The untitled work shows the singer leaning against a wall in a white crop top and unbuttoned black jeans and is now on view in the gallery’s History Makers Now space, which spotlights figures who have shaped contemporary culture.
The image became one of the defining pictures of Charli’s Brat era, the 2024 album that turned her into a mainstream phenomenon on the strength of its candor and “debauched swagger,” as the BBC described it. The acquisition was funded by a gift from the Bukhman Foundation.
“Harley Weir has developed a distinctive photographic language that combines intimacy with a powerful sense of presence,” said Brandei Estes, the gallery’s senior curator of photographs. “We are delighted to acquire this striking portrait of Charli XCX, which captures one of the defining cultural figures of her generation.”
The acquisition arrives the same week Charli released her eighth album, Music, Fashion, Film, built around chopped-up guitar samples and distorted melodies that find her reflecting on fame and artistic identity in Brat’s aftermath.
Portraits of pop stars have been grabbing headlines recently. In March, the National Portrait Gallery acquired West End Girl (Lily Allen) (2025), a painting by Spanish artist Nieves González that doubled as the cover art for Allen’s album of the same name. Charli herself was previously the subject of a portrait by painter Issy Wood, commissioned for the November 2025 cover of Vanity Fair.
Beyond music, Charli has been expanding into film, with recent roles in the Polish drama Erupcja, the ensemble film Sacrifice alongside Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans, and the mockumentary The Moment, based on the release of the Brat album. She is set to headline the Reading and Leeds festivals in the U.K. next month before a North American tour in the fall.
