Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Circle of Dance

Learn how music and dance continue to bind American Indian communities to all living things, to the earth, to the spirit world, and—when people have deep ancestral claims to their dances—to the past.

October 6, 2012 – April 14, 2019

American Indian Museum New York

Tablescapes: Designs for Dining

Three distinct table settings from different time periods illuminate how design transforms the ritual of communal dining in response to cultural and social changes.

October 5, 2018 – April 14, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor

Bill Traylor is one of the most celebrated American self-taught artists. His drawn and painted imagery embodies the crossroads of multiple worlds: black and white, rural and urban, old and new.

September 28, 2018 – April 7, 2019

American Art Museum

Henrietta Lacks

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery recognizes the life of Henrietta Lacks with the installation of a 2017 portrait by Kadir Nelson.

May 15, 2018 – March 31, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Emily Howland Photography Album

The Emily Howland photography album containing a previously unknown portrait of abolitionist and Underground Railroad-conductor Harriet Tubman is on view.

March 25, 2019 – March 31, 2019

African American History and Culture Museum

The REDress Project

The installation of empty red dresses centers on the issue of missing or murdered indigenous women.

March 1, 2019 – March 31, 2019

American Indian Museum DC

The Road Ahead: Reimagining Mobility

The Road Ahead points to several possible futures for our cities and asks audiences to consider how design will improve and expand options for urban transport.

December 14, 2018 – March 31, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Let's Get It Right: Work Incentive Posters of the 1920s

Explore how employers encouraged their workforce. The display features 16 posters from the early 20th century with images and sayings designed to influence attitudes, reduce conflict, and increase efficiency.

July 27, 2018 – March 24, 2019

American History Museum

Color Decoded: The Textiles of Richard Landis

Color Decoded celebrates the recent acquisition of six of the master weaver’s most important textiles, installed together with three process drawings and a selection of weavings.

June 9, 2018 – March 17, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Saturated: The Allure and Science of Color

Featuring over 190 objects spanning from antiquity to the present, the exhibition reveals how designers apply the theories of the world’s greatest color thinkers to bring order and excitement to the visual world.

May 11, 2018 – March 17, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now

The exhibition explores this relatively unstudied art form by examining its rich historical roots and considering its forceful contemporary presence.

May 11, 2018 – March 17, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Trailblazing: 100 Years of Our National Parks

Featuring original postage stamp art from the United States Postal Service and artifacts loaned by the National Park Service, the exhibition explores the myriad—and sometimes surprising—ways that mail moves to, through and from our national parks.

June 9, 2016 – March 3, 2019

Postal Museum

Alexander Hamilton: Soldier, Secretary, Icon

Explore the extraordinary life of Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) through original mail sent and signed by him in his role as the first Secretary of the Treasury and through portraits of him and his contemporaries on stamps.

May 25, 2018 – March 3, 2019

Postal Museum

Advertising War

Poster imagery presented gives glimpses of the war front, illustrates participation on the home front, reveals the new roles of women, demonstrates new technologies, shows the breadth of military service, and depicts America’s allies and enemies at that time.

April 6, 2017 – February 10, 2019

American History Museum

Subodh Gupta

The Freer|Sackler features the artist’s monumental installation Terminal.

October 14, 2017 – February 3, 2019

Asian Art Museum, East Building

City of Hope: Resurrection City and the 1968 Poor People's Campaign

City of Hope commemorates the 50th anniversary of Dr. King’s daring vision to end poverty in the United States.

December 15, 2017 – February 3, 2019

American History Museum

Sean Scully: Landline

In a site-conditioned installation, fifteen of the seminal Landline paintings are exhibited alongside a number of the artist's iconic stacked Corten steel sculptures and works on paper.

September 13, 2018 – February 3, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs

This exhibition traces the history of A box of ten photographs between 1969 and 1973, telling the crucial story of the portfolio that established the foundation for Arbus’s posthumous career.

April 6, 2018 – January 27, 2019

American Art Museum

Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography

From the collapse of the traditional woodblock-printing industry to the medium’s resurrection as an art form, this exhibition explores Japanese artists’ reactions to modernity in the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.

September 29, 2018 – January 24, 2019

Asian Art Museum, East Building

Japan Modern: Photography from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection

Celebrating the Freer|Sackler’s recent acquisition of a major Japanese photography collection, this exhibition features iconic works dating from the 1920s to the 1980s.

September 29, 2018 – January 24, 2019

Asian Art Museum, East Building

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man

The exhibition brings the maker culture of Burning Man alive hrough artworks, room-sized installations, jewelry, costumes, and ephemera that will transport visitors to the gathering’s famed desert location, the “playa.”

March 30, 2018 – January 21, 2019

Renwick Gallery

UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar

The exhibition highlights the work of two leading contemporary artists who grapple with the under- and misrepresentation of certain minorities in portraiture and American history.

March 23, 2018 – January 6, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Celebrating Fifty Years

In 1968, following major renovations, the Old Patent Office Building opened as the permanent home for two Smithsonian museums, the National Collection of Fine Arts (since renamed the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and the National Portrait Gallery.

August 11, 2017 – January 6, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen

Artist Trevor Paglen’s work explores surveillance, state secrecy, data collection, and the ways in which technology is altering humans’ relationship with the land around us.

June 21, 2018 – January 6, 2019

American Art Museum

Your Community, Your Story: Celebrating Five Decades of the Anacostia Community Museum, 1967-2017

Your Community, Your Story highlights some of the museum’s signature projects and demonstrates how ACM’s work helps us understand city life and strengthen community bonds.

September 15, 2017 – January 6, 2019

Anacostia Community Museum