With changing times, TIME's covers have changed dramatically. This week offers an excellent example: illustrating the vanishing ozone shield required the efforts of two photographers, a digital imaging expert and an art director who blended their work into a compelling design. But if many of our covers these days have become more conceptual to address broad issues, there was a time when we usually featured individuals, and assigned noted artists to paint them.
The results were often superb -- or at least the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington thinks so. At an exhibition running through May 17, the nation's official...