Aretha Franklin is no one’s stand-in. But when the Queen of Soul took the stage at the 1998 Grammy Awards, she wasn't the singer the audience was expecting. At the last minute, opera legend Luciano Pavarotti canceled his long-awaited headlining performance of "Nisan Doma" due to illness, and without any warning or preparation, Franklin agreed to step in.

Neither her type nor her typical vocal range. But Pavarotti was a close friend of Franklin's and she paid him a heartfelt tribute earlier that week. With only 20 minutes' notice, Grammy producers burst into Franklin's dressing room and made an outrageous request. Within moments, they anxiously brought Franklin to the stage.

They need not worry. That night, the legend of the Soul Goddess shone brightly.

In a respectful tenor, Franklin delivers one of the most memorable performances of her career, erasing the implicit boundaries surrounding one of opera's most famous arias. Franklin's eulogy isn't entirely faithful: no one would mistake her voice for that of a white, male Italian (according to the song's tradition). But she never thought it would be like this.

"I was mesmerized," recalled Devandlin Reese, curator of music and performing arts at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, who was in the audience that night. "She brings her own signature style and interpretation. She translated "Nissen Doma" and truly captured the essence and emotion of the work. At the 1998 Grammy Awards,

, Franklin is not a replacement. She was a visionary.

Aretha Franklin died on August 16 at the age of 76. She was buried at her home in Detroit, Michigan. Surrounded by friends and family, the beloved Queen of Soul left behind an amazing legacy that revolutionized rhythm and blues and empowered generations of civil rights activists and feminists. At the Smithsonian, her life story is remembered in photographs, artwork, recordings and other ephemera.

"She changed popular music," Reese said. "She (inherited). African and African American musical traditions bring together the sacred and the secular. And [beyond] everything from historical movement to basic emotions. "

Franklin in the Museum of African American History's Musical Crossroads exhibition, curated by Reece to reflect the significant impact of African American music on American culture.

"You can She is heard in every singer who sings in pop music, even today," Reece explains. "Her sense of liberation opened the floodgates for singers who followed her, and she carried on the legacy of singers who came before her. In 1968, an Eye magazine insert featured a poster of 26-year-old Aretha Franklin, created by graphic designer Milton Glaser. The work will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery from 17 to 22 August 2018. Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 25, 1942, but spent much of her childhood in Detroit, where she moved when she was four. It was here, at the Baptist church where her father was pastor, that her musical career began in earnest.

Her vivid, acerbic voice, honed by Sunday gospel and Detroit's burgeoning jazz cult culture, soon outgrew the space afforded her in the church pulpit. Soon she mastered the piano, playing stop-start solos with ease. Franklin's talent was most evident in her father, who became one of her first managers when she was a teenager. After moving to New York at the age of 18, Franklin made a conscious transition to secular music. Recalling the racial tensions that permeated the segregated neighborhood of her childhood in 1950s Detroit, she began experimenting with signing R&B deals, noting in a column for the Amsterdam News, "Blues music came from my people in slavery." A music born out of the suffering of the day." Meanwhile, her father's best friend, Martin Luther King, Jr., was making waves across the country***. As Franklin's voice began to reverberate through the music world, it echoed within a rising historical movement. In 1967, Aretha's feminist cover of Otis Redding's "Respect" topped the charts. A year later, the king was assassinated; Franklin celebrated him with a heartfelt rendition of Thomas Dorsey's "Take My Hand, Dear Lord."

"She really [blurs] those lines that divide black and white music, or sacred and secular music, 'or the sound and technique of music that can really describe and define what a musician should be,'" Reece said ,

By the late 1960s, Aretha Franklin was known as the "Queen of Soul." She was an unquestionable force of musical achievement: her voice, intense and defiant, boasted A huge range to match her spirit.

One particularly famous photo, currently on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, depicts Franklin, wearing a white feather-cuffed jacket at the 1968 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, gleefully humming into a microphone, "Sensitive." Musical appreciation and style are what really define soul as an essence," Reece explains. In November of that year, a poster of Franklin appeared as an insert in a Hearst-sponsored youth-focused event. Short-lived Eye magazine. Created by famed graphic designer Milton Glaser (who was also responsible for the "I Love New York" logo), the poster features a "highly emotional" Franklin with his mouth wide open and a '60s-like " "Glorious" bouffant hair, vibrant reds, blues and purples, said Asma Naim, associate curator of prints, drawings and media arts at the National Portrait Gallery.

"[The portrait] has an electricity, a pulsating rhythm that you can imagine her voice having," Naim said. "Glaser's designs display Aretha Franklin's stunning verve and vitality in pattern, color, placement, and shape."

Although Eye magazine only lasted 15 issues, it was discontinued in 1969. Out of print, the poster would go on to sell millions of copies worldwide. In 2011, the National Portrait Gallery acquired the original poster, along with a set of discreet removal instructions ("Tear carefully along perforation lines"). The poster is titled in honor of the "First Lady of Soul," whose songs were "earthy and sensual, pulsing with the rhythms of her early gospel days."

"This is an important historical document," Na Im said. "It really captures the mood of the period, the aesthetic of the era. It shows not only the incredible relevance and majesty of Aretha Franklin early in her career, but also the incredible power of soul music The energy that has been a part of our culture for so long

At the same time, the poster’s humble roots speak to the ubiquity of the woman it depicts, a 25-by-25-inch portrait of Franklin. Designed for the underage target audience of an oft-forgotten 1960s periodical, it hangs alongside giant life-size portraits and fragile canvases, but is perhaps easier to see.

“Portraits surround us in the most casual ways, and three years ago, Franklin performed several songs, including “Respect” and “Freedom,” at the National Portrait Gallery’s inaugural 2015 Portrait of America exhibition. Above, Franklin is one of the recipients of the 2015 National Portrait Award.

"The award celebrates individual achievement in a variety of fields," Naim explained. “We decided to pay tribute to the outstanding achievements of those individuals whose portraits have been collected by [the gallery].

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