Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Space Race

This exhibition traces the competition in space between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union from its origins in the 1950s to the recent international cooperation.

May 16, 1997 – March 27, 2022

Air and Space Museum

Storied Women of the Civil War Era

This intimate exhibition includes portraits of Civil War era women who captivated the public while becoming sought-after subjects for Mathew Brady’s camera.

May 24, 2019 – March 20, 2022

Portrait Gallery

Unsettled Nature: Artists Reflect on the Age of Humans

Unsettled Nature offers visitors the opportunity to explore the unparalleled, ubiquitous and still-growing mark that humanity is making on the world through 16 works of art.

June 18, 2021 – March 7, 2022

Natural History Museum

New Glass Now documents the innovation and dexterity of artists, designers, and architects from around the world working in the challenging material of glass. This global survey is designed to highlight the breadth and depth of contemporary glass making.

October 22, 2021 – March 6, 2022

Renwick Gallery

Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery

Connections is the Renwick Gallery’s dynamic ongoing permanent collection presentation, featuring more than 80 objects celebrating craft as a discipline and an approach to living differently in the modern world.

March 12, 2019 – March 6, 2022

Renwick Gallery

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Early and Notable Editions

The exhibit shows the early and notable editions of the novel in the library’s collection, as well as its interesting publishing history.

February 28, 2020 – February 28, 2022

African American History and Culture Museum

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa

Rare and precious archaeological fragments are seen side by side, bringing new understanding to complete works of art from the medieval period.

July 16, 2021 – February 27, 2022

African Art Museum

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Original "I Have a Dream" Speech

Martin Luther King Jr.’s original speech from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is on display in Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom.

January 13, 2022 – February 27, 2022

African American History and Culture Museum

Jon Gray of Ghetto Gastro Selects

The Bronx, New York-based creative collective Ghetto Gastro curates the 19th installment in the exhibition series that invites designers, artists, architects, and public figures to examine and interpret the museum’s collection.

July 1, 2021 – February 13, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Encountering the Buddha: Art and Practice Across Asia

Visitors can step into a Tibetan Buddhist shrine, linger at a Sri Lankan stupa, travel with an eighth-century Korean monk and discover remarkable objects in Encountering the Buddha.

October 14, 2017 – February 6, 2022

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Warranted to Give Satisfaction: Daguerreotypes by Jeremiah Gurney

In 1840, Jeremiah Gurney abandoned his career as a jeweler to establish one of New York City’s first daguerreotype studios.

June 25, 2021 – February 6, 2022

Portrait Gallery

Welcome Home: A Portrait of East Baltimore, 1975-1980

Of the more than seventy projects funded by the NEA, the East Baltimore Survey was unique for having been conceived, led, and carried out by women photographers.

July 16, 2021 – January 23, 2022

American Art Museum

Her Story: A Century of Women Writers

This exhibition drawn from the NPG collection highlights twenty-four noted women writers from the past one hundred years.

September 18, 2020 – January 23, 2022

Portrait Gallery

Hokusai: Mad about Painting

Drawing on the museum’s impressive Hokusai collection artworks are being added throughout the summer.

July 16, 2021 – January 9, 2022

Asian Art Museum, West Building

Nature by Design: Cochineal

This installation explores the enduring legacy of the cochineal insect as a natural colorant and its innovative use among contemporary designers from across the Americas.

November 16, 2019 – January 2, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Suzie Zuzek for Lilly Pulitzer: The Prints that Made the Fashion Brand

The exhibition features more than 35 original watercolor and gouache design drawings by Zuzek to reveal Zuzek’s artistic contribution to the iconic Pulitzer style.

June 10, 2021 – January 2, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

The Modernist French Garden: Designs by the Vera Brothers

This exhibition unites over 20 striking Art Deco drawings for gardens with the 1912 published treatise Le nouveau jardin (The New Garden).

June 10, 2021 – January 2, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting

On view are nearly 40 diverse, exciting paintings from the museum's rich permanent collection that transcend, represent, or subvert conventional ideas of authenticity.

November 16, 2019 – January 2, 2022

American Indian Museum New York

Nature by Design: Plastics

From molded tortoiseshell and vulcanized rubber to bioplastic pellets and semi-synthetic yarn, the beauty of natural plastics and design’s achievements with these pliable materials are explored in this fascinating range of objects from Cooper Hewitt’s collection.

June 8, 2019 – January 2, 2022

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

What Is Feminist Art?

On view are more than 75 vibrant and varied personal statements from artists from 1976 and now that elucidate the contours of feminist art.

November 26, 2019 – December 31, 2021

Archives of American Art

Visionary: The Cumming Family Collection (Part 2)

This exhibition reveals the results of more than 25 years of inspired collecting by Ian and Annette Cumming and installed in two parts. Part two, featured here, includes portraits by American artists Jack Beal, Chuck Close and Nelson Shanks. This exhibition is curated by Chief Curator Emerita Brandon Brame Fortune and will be accompanied by a limited-edition publication.

May 14, 2021 – October 31, 2021

Portrait Gallery

Willi Smith: Street Couture

In the first museum exhibition dedicated to American designer Willi Smith (1948–1987), over 200 works by Smith and collaborators will illuminate how the streetwear pioneer broke down social, cultural, and economic boundaries.

March 13, 2020 – October 24, 2021

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Challenging the Face of Science: The Bearded Lady Project

This project brings into being the missing legacy of female paleontologists to overcome societal stereotypes concerning gender and professional roles.

November 14, 2019 – September 26, 2021

Natural History Museum

Kwel' Hoy: We Draw the Line

On July 29, 2021, a totem pole carved by the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation will conclude its cross-country journey in Washington, D.C.

July 2, 2021 – September 9, 2021

American Indian Museum DC

Men of Change: Taking it to the Streets

Men of Change presents a nation’s story through the profiles of revolutionary African American men.

February 1, 2021 – August 31, 2021

Anacostia Community Museum