A Presidential Portrait In Pastry

Christopher Toothman/NPR

Zilly Rosen, an artist from Buffalo, N.Y., created a portrait of Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln out of more than 5,000 cupcakes. The piece is on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum until 5 p.m. on Saturday, when the public is invited to "de-install" it.

When viewed from above, the installation looks something like an exercise in large-scale cupcake pointillism — each cupcake acts as one pixel in the image.

The cupcakes contain a cream filling and are topped with a colored disc made of fondant, which is a more pliable kind of icing made with powdered sugar.

This is Rosen's second cupcake portrait of Obama. In November she constructed one at his campaign headquarters in Buffalo. That one was about a fifth of the size.