Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond

Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond highlights the imprint of Asian Americans on the physical and cultural terrain of Washington, D.C.

September 7, 2024 – November 30, 2025

American Art Museum

Galleries for 18th to Early 20th Century Art

Selections from the permanent collection offer insights into the rich artistic and cultural history of the United States.

July 1, 2006 – September 21, 2025

American Art Museum

Cecilia Vicuña: Quipu Viscera

Cecilia Vicuña’s site-specific installation is made of hanging skeins of red, brown, and pink unspun wool.

April 24, 2025 – September 21, 2025

American Art Museum

The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture

The Shape of Power examines the ways in which sculpture has shaped and reflected attitudes and understandings about race in the U.S.

November 8, 2024 – September 14, 2025

American Art Museum

Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo

An in-depth look at three trailblazing American artists of Japanese descent in the story of modernism.

November 15, 2024 – August 17, 2025

American Art Museum

Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Island

Artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen's video work The Island (2017) is shown for the first time with Bidong Spirit I, a sculpted headdress Nguyen created for the film.

August 16, 2024 – June 8, 2025

American Art Museum

Fighters for Freedom: William H. Johnson Picturing Justice

William H. Johnson's Fighters for Freedom series is a tribute to African American activists, scientists, teachers, and performers as well as international heads of state working to bring peace to the world.

March 8, 2024 – September 10, 2024

American Art Museum

Pattern and Paradox: The Quilts of Amish Women

Explore the creative practice of Amish quilters in the United States.

March 28, 2024 – August 26, 2024

American Art Museum

Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas

This exhibition provides an intimate view of Thomas’ evolving artistic practices during her most prolific period from 1959 to her death in 1978.

September 15, 2023 – August 4, 2024

American Art Museum

Carrie Mae Weems: Looking Forward, Looking Back

This focused exhibition pairs two projects by Carrie Mae Weems that explore the relationship of memory to history and of memory.

September 22, 2023 – July 7, 2024

American Art Museum

Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies

Musical Thinking: New Video Artists in the Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.

June 23, 2023 – January 28, 2024

American Art Museum

Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea

The exhibition examines the perspectives of 48 modern and contemporary artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of this region, which too often has been dominated by romanticized myths and Euro-American historical accounts.

July 28, 2023 – January 15, 2024

American Art Museum

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection

We Are Made of Stories traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art.

July 1, 2022 – March 26, 2023

American Art Museum

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

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

¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

¡Printing the Revolution! explores the rise of Chicano graphics within 1960s social movements and the ways in which Chicanx artists since then have advanced innovative printmaking practices attuned to social justice.

November 20, 2020 – August 8, 2021

American Art Museum

New on View: Dawoud Bey and William H. Johnson

This focused installation features recently acquired photographs by Dawoud Bey in conversation with a painting by William H. Johnson that refer to the Underground Railroad.

May 14, 2021 – August 5, 2021

American Art Museum

Modern and Contemporary Art

SAAM’s galleries for modern and contemporary art display selections from the permanent collection from the 1940s to the present. Closed until fall 2023.

July 1, 2006 – July 12, 2021

American Art Museum

Art Since 1945

On view is modern and contemporary art, including works from Color Field, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art.

July 1, 2006 – July 12, 2021

American Art Museum

Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture

Alexander von Humboldt was arguably the most important naturalist of the 19th century. Alexander von Humboldt and the United States places American art squarely in the center of a conversation on Humboldt’s lasting influence on the way we think about our relationship to our environment.

September 18, 2020 – July 11, 2021

American Art Museum

Sculpture Down to Scale: Models for Public Art at Federal Buildings, 1974-1985

The nine maquettes in this exhibition—many of them considered by the artists to be completed works of art in their own right—offered a concrete vision of the artists’ ideas and served as a way to share them with selection committees, patrons, and communities.

May 31, 2019 – November 22, 2020

American Art Museum

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists considers the representation of the American buffalo from two perspectives: a selection of paintings by George Catlin (1796–1872), and works by modern Native artists.

October 11, 2019 – November 22, 2020

American Art Museum

Chiura Obata: American Modern

Chiura Obata presents the most comprehensive survey of the artist's rich and varied body of work to date with more than 150 paintings and personal effects, many of which are on public display for the first time.

November 27, 2019 – March 13, 2020

American Art Museum

Direct Carving

Spontaneous! Truthful! Liberating! Direct carvers often used such words to describe their unconventional method of sculpting, in which an artist works directly on a piece of stone or wood as opposed to with a model, cast, or preconceived design.

February 5, 2015 – March 13, 2020

American Art Museum

American Myth and Memory: David Levinthal Photographs

American Myth and Memory: David Levinthal Photographs brings together six of the artist’s best-known bodies of work to explore some myths found in American popular culture and their place in our collective memory.

June 7, 2019 – October 14, 2019

American Art Museum