Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Rococo: The Continuing Curve, 1730-2008

Explore the Rococo style and its continuing revivals up to the present day.

March 7, 2008 – July 6, 2008

Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collection

See 275 pieces of avant-garde jewelry by contemporary artists from around the world, along with a history of jewelry making that honors it as an important craft in the world of fine arts.

March 14, 2008 – July 6, 2008

Renwick Gallery

Directions: Amy Sillman: Third Person Singular

As part of the Directions series, see works that are intimate, psychological, and full of humor and pathos by New York-based painter Amy Sillman.

March 13, 2008 – July 6, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Celebrating the Lucelia Artist Award, 2001-2006

This exhibition features works by each of the previous winners of the Lucelia Artist Award.

September 21, 2007 – June 22, 2008

American Art Museum

Classically Greek: Coins and Bank Notes from Antiquity to Today

View bank notes and coins that vividly portray Greek culture, history, and mythology. These common objects of everyday exchange preserve rich stories about people, politics, and the powerful forces that shaped both ancient and modern Greece.

April 10, 2008 – June 15, 2008

Smithsonian Castle

A Thousand Kisses: Love Letters from the Archives of American Art

View love letters from the Archives' collection sent to and received from American artists that provide insights into their lives.

January 25, 2008 – June 2, 2008

Archives of American Art

Obata's Yosemite

During a visit to Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada in 1927, Obata made approximately 100 drawings in pencil, watercolor, and sumi ink. While in Tokyo between 1928 and 1932, he transformed these California landscape watercolors and sketches into a limited-edition portfolio titled World Landscape Series, shown here for the first time on the East Coast.

February 22, 2008 – June 1, 2008

American Art Museum

Color as Field: American Painting, 1950-1975

A Color Field painting is characterized by pouring, staining, spraying, or painting thinned paint onto raw canvas to create vast chromatic expanses. See examples by major figures of this movement, which constitutes one of the crowning achievements of postwar American abstract art.

February 29, 2008 – May 26, 2008

American Art Museum

Cases: Special Gems Highlighted

This case displays gemstones acquired by the newly established Tiffany & Co. Foundation Endowment.

April 11, 2007 – May 14, 2008

Natural History Museum

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image: Part I - Dreams

Recall the dream-like state induced by film viewing in this exhibition, as artists employ the technology and techniques of cinema to evoke a sense of passage through different stages of consciousness.

February 14, 2008 – May 11, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

2007 Nature's Best Photography: Windland Smith Rice International Awards

See winners in 15 categories from the 2007 Nature's Best Photography Windland Smith Rice Awards and winners in 9 categories from the National Wildlife Photography Awards.

October 30, 2007 – April 27, 2008

Natural History Museum

James Luna: Emendatio

This multimedia installation by James Luna (Luiseno) pays tribute to Pablo Tac, a 19th-century Luiseno Indian who traveled to Rome in 1834 from the San Luis Rey Mission in California to study for the priesthood.

March 1, 2008 – April 20, 2008

American Indian Museum New York

Black Box: Rivane Neuenschwander

Filmmaker Rivane Neuenschwander includes themes of chance and improvisation in her films and is perhaps best known for her photographic series.

December 17, 2007 – April 20, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Mexican Cycles: Festival Images by George O. Jackson de Llano

On view are approximately 150 color photographs of the religious festivals of 30 Indigenous communities from across Mexico taken by the Mexican-American photographer George O. Jackson de Llano.

September 26, 2007 – April 20, 2008

Natural History Museum

Research Case: Extinction of the Hawaiian Honeycreeper

Habitat changes have led to the decline of Hawaiian native birds; at least 55 species have gone extinct since the arrival of humans. The Hawaiian honeycreepers exemplify this decline.

January 15, 2008 – April 17, 2008

Natural History Museum

Patterned Feathers, Piercing Eyes: Edo Masters from the Price Collection

See a selection of 109 Japanese Edo Period (1615-1868) paintings that reflect a remarkably creative span in Japan's history of visual culture.

November 10, 2007 – April 13, 2008

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Treasures of American History

While the American History Museum is closed for renovation (Sept. 5, 2006-fall 2008), see more than 150 highlights from the museum here.

November 17, 2006 – April 12, 2008

Air and Space Museum

Portrait of Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert (b. 1964, Washington, D.C.), the mock pundit from the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report recently contacted the National Portrait Gallery hoping to donate his portrait. While the portrait is not one that would typically be accessioned into the gallery's permanent collection, the Portrait Gallery agreed to go along with the joke and hang his portrait for a limited time.

January 17, 2008 – April 1, 2008

Portrait Gallery

John Alexander: A Retrospective

This retrospective of the works of neo-expressionist artist John Alexander is the first full-scale examination of the artist's three-decade career.

December 21, 2007 – March 16, 2008

American Art Museum

New Arrivals

New Arrivals displays paintings, drawings, sculptures, posters, prints, and photographs featuring such subjects as Louis Armstrong, Jefferson Airplane, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, James Brown, Susan Sontag, and Lenny Bruce.

June 8, 2007 – March 16, 2008

Portrait Gallery

An Exploration in Photography with Native Teens

View photographs by 13 Native high school students, mainly representing tribes from Oregon and Washington State, who visited the Oregon College of Art and Craft in the summer of 2007.

March 3, 2008 – March 15, 2008

American Indian Museum DC

Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits

Photographs illuminate the variety of ways that African Americans resisted and redefined an America that needed but rarely accepted its black citizens.

October 19, 2007 – March 2, 2008

Portrait Gallery

Japanese Arts of the Edo Period, 1615-1868

Visit the first of two exhibitions featuring paintings, lacquer, and ceramics of the Edo period from the Freer Gallery's extensive permanent collection.

August 18, 2007 – February 24, 2008

Asian Art Museum, West Building

Wine, Worship and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani

See more than 100 objects that provide a rich archaeological view of the ancient Asian country Colchis—land of the Golden Fleece.

December 1, 2007 – February 24, 2008

Asian Art Museum, East Building

The Potter's Mark: Identity and Tea Ceramics

View Japanese ceramics that were among the first in Asia to display impressed or incised marks relating to their makers.

August 18, 2007 – February 24, 2008

Asian Art Museum, West Building