Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia's Sacred Mountain

Revealing Krishna transports visitors to a sacred mountain in the floodplains of southern Cambodia.

April 30, 2022 – September 18, 2022

Food for the People: Eating and Activism in Greater Washington

Take a deep dive into the food issues of the nation’s capital—past and present—with this outdoor and indoor exhibition featuring artifacts, art installations, videos, and hands-on interactives.

April 17, 2021 – September 17, 2022

Anacostia Community Museum

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe

Dakota Modern: The Art of Oscar Howe traces more than forty years of the artist’s career and development from early conventional work created while in high school in the 1930s through the emergence in the 1950s and 1960s of his innovative and abstract approach to painting.

March 12, 2022 – September 11, 2022

American Indian Museum New York

The Power to See Beauty: Charles Lang Freer

Who has “the power to see beauty”? How much do you need to know to appreciate a work of art from another culture or historical era? Our museum founder Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) asked himself these fundamental questions as he prepared to transfer his personal collection of Asian antiquities and American tonalist paintings to a new public museum on the National Mall.

October 14, 2017 – September 6, 2022

Asian Art Museum, West Building

Watergate: Portraiture and Intrigue

On the fiftieth anniversary of the Watergate break-in, this exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery's collection, brings visitors face-to-face with the scandal's cast of characters.

March 25, 2022 – September 5, 2022

Portrait Gallery

Upending 1620: Where Do We Begin?

Upending 1620: Where Do We Begin? is a display that examines the early encounters between Wampanoag peoples and English colonists, and the important legacies of those encounters over the next 400 years.

August 6, 2021 – September 5, 2022

American History Museum

Habitat

Habitat is a two-year Smithsonian-wide exhibition exploring one big idea: Protecting habitats protects life.

May 10, 2019 – September 5, 2022

Smithsonian Gardens

Duro Olowu Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection

Olowu’s exhibition highlights the theme of pattern and repetition throughout the collection, demonstrating how designers, artists, and makers have relied on pattern to express ideas, preserve heritage, capture attention, and construct objects and environments.

March 18, 2022 – August 28, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies

Make Good the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies is a 4,300-square-foot exhibition exploring the Reconstruction era through an African American lens.

September 24, 2021 – August 21, 2022

African American History and Culture Museum

Heroes: Principles of African Greatness

Heroes features a selection of masterworks from the the museum's permanent collection in a new, dynamic installation that tells the story of key heroic principles and people in Africa’s arts and history.

November 16, 2019 – August 1, 2022

African Art Museum

Sophia Crownfield: Drawn from Nature

From the 1890s to the 1920s, Sophia Crownfield designed prints for some of the most prominent silk and wallpaper manufacturers in the United States.

February 4, 2022 – July 31, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Celebrate Smokey: 75 Years of Fighting Wildfires

A new Smokey Bear outdoor exhibit at Smithsonian’s National Zoo invites visitors to look back at the legacy of one of the most famous residents in the Zoo’s 130-year history.

May 23, 2019 – July 31, 2022

National Zoo

Mind Over Matter: Zen in Medieval Japan

This exhibition showcases the breadth of the museum’s medieval Zen collections, highlighting rare and striking works from Japan and China to illustrate the visual, spiritual, and philosophical power of Zen.

March 5, 2022 – July 24, 2022

Asian Art Museum, West Building

Falcons: The Art of the Hunt

A selection of paintings and objects from ancient Egypt to China offer a glimpse into the fascinating world of falcons.

January 15, 2022 – July 17, 2022

Asian Art Museum, West Building

FUTURES

Part exhibition, part festival, FUTURES presents nearly 32,000 square feet of new immersive site-specific art installations, interactives, working experiments, inventions, speculative designs, and “artifacts of the future,” as well as historic objects and discoveries from the Smithsonian.

November 20, 2021 – July 6, 2022

Arts and Industries Building

Ruby Slippers

A special collection of displays featuring American history through culture, entertainment, and the arts.

October 19, 2018 – June 12, 2022

American History Museum

The Peacock Room in Blue and White

The Peacock Room in Blue and White fills the room’s shelving with blue-and-white Chinese porcelains, inspired by room’s appearance in 1876 when it was the dining room of Frederick Leyland, a shipping magnate in London.

May 18, 2019 – June 1, 2022

Asian Art Museum, West Building

Hung Liu: Portraits of Promised Lands, 1968-2020

The National Portrait Gallery presents the first major large-scale retrospective of work by Hung Liu, the internationally acclaimed Chinese-born American artist.

August 27, 2021 – May 30, 2022

Portrait Gallery

All Work and No Pay: A History of Women's Invisible Labor

Break rooms across America hold signs that read: “Your mother doesn’t work here.” All Work and No Pay examines the implied expectation that women will take care of the housework.

March 4, 2019 – May 30, 2022

American History Museum

Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha

This exhibition focuses on a selection of extraordinary seventeenth-century textiles and full-length portraits from Safavid Iran. Fine illustrated manuscript folios from our collections are also included in the exhibition.

December 18, 2021 – May 15, 2022

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano

Experience the spectacle of Venice and its rich history as a glassmaking capital through Sargent, Whistler, and Venetian Glass: American Artists and the Magic of Murano.

October 8, 2021 – May 8, 2022

American Art Museum

Baseball Legend Jackie Robinson's Jersey

Baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s jersey is on display in commemoration of the 75th anniversary Robinson integrating Major League Baseball.

April 7, 2022 – May 1, 2022

African American History and Culture Museum

Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women

Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women unearths stories of women who have enriched our understanding and appreciation of orchids.

January 29, 2022 – April 24, 2022

Smithsonian Gardens

Magnificent Obsessions: Why We Collect

Smithsonian Libraries preserves historic treasures and everyday items to provide a window onto the past.

November 7, 2018 – April 11, 2022

American History Museum

Underground Modernist: E. McKnight Kauffer

The largest-ever exhibition of works by graphic design pioneer E. McKnight Kauffer (American, 1890–1954) traces the designer’s transformative role in integrating avant-garde style into modern life.

September 10, 2021 – April 10, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum