Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Do Ho Suh: Almost Home

Do Ho Suh’s immersive, dreamlike work explores the nature and meaning of home, fastening ties between personal space and shared experience.

March 16, 2018 – August 5, 2018

American Art Museum

To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia

Thirty of the finest historical Central Asian ikat hangings and coats from the Freer|Sackler collections, donated by Guido Goldman, as well as seven of Oscar de la Renta’s iconic creations are on view.

March 24, 2018 – July 29, 2018

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Passion for the Exotic: Japonism

The exhibition explores how American and European designers, following the opening of Japan to the West in the late 19th century, created objects inspired by Japanese imports and other examples of Eastern design through form, technique, motifs, and materials.

September 9, 2017 – July 22, 2018

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

The First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald at 100

Highlighting Ella Fitzgerald (1917-1996), one of the greatest American singers.

April 1, 2017 – July 15, 2018

American History Museum

Life in One Cubic Foot

What can we discover in just a cubic foot of ocean? Enter the small worlds of marine biocubes to find out!

March 4, 2016 – July 8, 2018

Natural History Museum

Remembering Robert F. Kennedy

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery celebrates the life and legacy of Robert (“Bobby”) Kennedy with a portrait created by Roy Lichtenstein in 1968, commissioned for the cover of Time magazine.

June 6, 2018 – July 8, 2018

Portrait Gallery

Jim Chuchu's Invocations

Kenyan multimedia artist Jim Chuchu’s mesmerizing suite of video projections, Invocation: The Severance of Ties (2015) and Invocation: Release (2015) are on display.

June 21, 2017 – June 24, 2018

African Art Museum

Bridging the Americas: Community and Belonging from Panama to Washington, D.C.

This exhibition highlights major themes that link the U.S. and Panama and the makings of community.

April 13, 2015 – June 12, 2018

Anacostia Community Museum

Secrets of the Lacquer Buddha

Secrets of the Lacquer Buddha unites the only sixth- and seventh-century, life-size Chinese lacquer buddha sculptures known: one from the Walters Art Museum, one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one from the Freer Gallery of Art.

December 9, 2017 – June 10, 2018

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Antebellum Portraits by Mathew Brady

This Daguerreian Gallery exhibition traces the trajectory of Brady’s early career through portrait daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and salted-paper prints in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

June 16, 2017 – June 3, 2018

Portrait Gallery

RECOGNIZE

The National Portrait Gallery turns 50 this year, and so does Marc Anthony. His portrait by Puerto Rican photographer ADÁL is on display.

May 3, 2018 – June 3, 2018

Portrait Gallery

Religion in Early America

Through dozens of objects and images, Religion in Early America considers the intersection of religious freedom, religious diversity, and religious growth from the colonial era through the first decades of U.S. history.

June 28, 2017 – June 3, 2018

American History Museum

Off the Beaten Track: A Road Trip through the Archives of American Art

The photographs, sketches, diaries, correspondence, and video recordings on view reveal how artists have shaped and are shaped by their surroundings, from the 1830s to the 2000s.

December 8, 2017 – June 3, 2018

Archives of American Art

2001: A Space Odyssey Immersive Art Exhibit

Immerse yourself in “The Barmecide Feast,” a fully realized, full-scale reflection of the iconic, neo-classical hotel room from the penultimate scene of Stanley Kubrick’s and Arthur C. Clarke’s landmark film.

April 8, 2018 – May 28, 2018

Air and Space Museum

Jewelry of Ideas: Gifts from the Susan Grant Lewin Collection

The exhibition, co-curated by Ursula Ilse-Neuman and Cooper Hewitt, features 150 brooches, necklaces, bracelets and rings, and traces radical developments in jewelry from the mid-20th century to the present.

November 17, 2017 – May 28, 2018

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America's Past Revealed

This bilingual (English/Spanish) exhibition illuminates Central America’s diverse and dynamic ancestral heritage with a selection of more than 150 objects. For thousands of years, Central America has been home to vibrant civilizations, each with unique, sophisticated ways of life, value systems, and arts.

April 18, 2015 – May 20, 2018

American Indian Museum New York

One Life: Sylvia Plath

The exhibition reveals how Plath shaped her identity visually as she came of age as a writer in the 1950s. Visitors will get a look into Plath’s personal life and her dualistic nature.

June 30, 2017 – May 20, 2018

Portrait Gallery

Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s

Brand New is the first museum exhibition to examine the artistic appropriation of commercial products in the late 20th century, a pivotal moment when artwork became a commodity and the artist became a brand.

February 14, 2018 – May 13, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

The Power of Words in an Age of Crisis: Buddhist Art in Japan

In Buddhism, the most powerful of all texts were the canonical scriptures known as sutras.

October 14, 2017 – May 6, 2018

Asian Art Museum, West Building

Ancient and Alive: Japan's Native Gods: Japanese Screens

The screens in this gallery depict celebrations during the Edo period (1615–1868), when their festivals were enjoyed by a broad sector of Japanese society.

October 14, 2017 – April 29, 2018

Asian Art Museum, West Building

In Memoriam: Barbara Bush

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery recognizes the life of Barbara Bush with a photograph by Diana Walker taken in 1989.

April 18, 2018 – April 29, 2018

Portrait Gallery

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Utopian Projects

The exhibition, spanning 1985 through present day, features more than 20 of the Kabakovs’ maquettes, whimsical models, for projects realized and unrealized.

September 7, 2017 – April 29, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Ilonka Karasz

One of the most successful American women designers of the early 20th century, Karasz deployed her modern aesthetic to design everything from ceramics and toys to rugs, silver, furniture, and more as seen in her works from the permanent collection.

October 12, 2017 – April 22, 2018

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. by displaying his likeness by Jack Lewis Hiller.

April 4, 2018 – April 17, 2018

Portrait Gallery

The Virtue in Vice

A selection of over 100 objects from Cooper Hewitt’s collection showcases the virtuosity of objects designed to make our indulgences more scintillating.

September 6, 2017 – April 15, 2018

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum