Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Wilderness America

Commemorate the Silver Anniversary of the Wilderness Society through photographs, maps, and text.

September 8, 1989 – November 26, 1989

Natural History Museum

Trees and Seas of Life: Philippine Environmental Rebirth

Focus on the forests, marine resources, and the trees of life in a Pacific Archipelago.

November 5, 1989 – November 26, 1989

Natural History Museum

Modernist Abstraction in American Prints

View 60 works from pre-World War II America. Images range from geometric forms to surreal shapes that explore the principles of early abstraction.

August 4, 1989 – November 19, 1989

American Art Museum

Tropical Plants

See a selection of "exotics," or tropical plants, including banana, citrus, and coffee trees; pineapple plants; and a variety of orchids.

November 11, 1989 – November 13, 1989

Ripley Center

Sales Exhibition: Native American Crafts of North and South Dakota

See jewelry, sculpture, beadwork, and headdresses.

September 29, 1989 – November 5, 1989

Renwick Gallery

Photographs of Afghanistan by Luke Powell

See 17 color photographs of the land, the people, and the architecture of the land-locked, war-torn Asian nation, taken between 1974 and 1978 by artist, traveler, and amateur archaeologist Luke Powell.

April 30, 1989 – October 31, 1989

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Recent Acquisition: Around Toroweap Point

See a 5-image panorama of a remote part of the Grand Canyon by photographer Mark Klett.

October 1, 1989 – October 31, 1989

American Art Museum

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the French Constitution of 1791

See two 18th-century copies of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the French Constitution of 1791 that are on loan from the French National Archives to celebrate the French bicentennial.

May 3, 1989 – October 31, 1989

Arts and Industries Building

Oshe Shango Staff

View a 16 1/2-inch wooden oshe Shango, a staff carried by devotees of Shango, the god of thunder worshipped by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria.

October 1, 1988 – October 31, 1989

African Art Museum

Views of Rome: Drawings and Watercolors from the Vatican Library

See over 80 drawings that trace the physical changes of ancient monuments from the Thomas Ashby collection of the Vatican Library.

August 8, 1989 – October 29, 1989

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Directions: Keith Sonnier Neon

Visit recent neon sculptures, including the artist's series Ba-O-Ba and Pictogram.

August 2, 1989 – October 29, 1989

Hirshhorn Museum

Houston Conwill Works

View an allegorical ground painting built around the Hirshhorn's circular fountain featuring the African American experience of the artist and paying homage to black leaders.

August 2, 1989 – October 29, 1989

Hirshhorn Museum

Yani: The Brush of Innocence

See 69 paintings by young Chinese artist Wang Yani, who began painting at age 2, along with a small group of historical Chinese paintings that illustrate the artistic tradition from which her work emerges.

June 25, 1989 – October 22, 1989

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Sesame Street, 1969-1989: The First 20 Years

Sesame Street memorabilia includes Ernie's rubber ducky, Oscar the Grouch and his trashcan, Big Bird, Slimey, Mr. Hooper's store front, the Sesame Street lamp post and sign, original animation cells, and story boards.

June 20, 1989 – October 15, 1989

American History Museum

Parting the Green Curtain/ The Evolution of Tropical Biology in Panama

This STRI exhibition describes the study of tropical organisms and how their complex interrelationships illuminate fundamental problems in ecology and evolution.

August 18, 1989 – October 4, 1989

Natural History Museum

Aeropittura Futurista: Images of Flight in Italian Art (1913-1942)

Learn about Italian Futurism, the first modern art movement to embrace technology as subject matter, in this exhibit of paintings, photographs, documents and books.

June 16, 1989 – October 2, 1989

Air and Space Museum

Recent Acquisition: Recording Sound

View is a unique combination of painting and sculpture by Theodore Roszak, influenced by surrealism and the Bauhaus.

September 1, 1989 – October 1, 1989

American Art Museum

Polished Perfection: The Art of Turned-Wood Bowls

See lathe-turned wood bowls in many styles and a variety of woods created by 21 master turners.

July 25, 1989 – October 1, 1989

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

The Way to Independence: Memories of a Hidatsa Indian Family, 1840-1920

The transformation of American society between 1840 and 1920 is shown though the experiences of three members of a Hidatsa Indian family.

April 12, 1989 – September 30, 1989

American History Museum

Stage Portraits: Photographs by Mathew Brady from the Frederick Hill Meserve Collection

As part of the reinstallation of the permanent collection, new selections from the glassplate negatives highlight the performing arts.

May 30, 1987 – September 30, 1989

Portrait Gallery

Inside Active Volcanoes: Kilauea and Mount Saint Helens

Color photomurals, backlit transparencies, film sequences, and models capture the power and beauty of eruptions of Kilauea and Mount St. Helens.

July 6, 1989 – September 24, 1989

Natural History Museum

Ralston Crawford Photographs

See 19 photographs taken by the artist, who painted from 1930-1940.

May 24, 1989 – September 24, 1989

Hirshhorn Museum

Robert Moskowitz: 1959-1989

This retrospective features more than 65 collages, mixed-media drawings and paintings by the contemporary American artist, who gained wide recognition as a "New Image" painter in the late 1970s.

June 21, 1989 – September 17, 1989

Hirshhorn Museum

Trilobites: The Thomas T. Johnson Collection

See 800 specimens of the fossil triolobites on loan from the Thomas T. Johnson collection, with examples from many parts of the U.S.

February 1, 1986 – September 15, 1989

Natural History Museum

U.S. Customs Service: The War Against Drugs

Through photographs, films, and aircraft models, the exhibition illustrates the complex technology used in tracking smugglers of illegal drugs.

December 18, 1987 – September 15, 1989

Air and Space Museum