Travel back 143 years to the revelry of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball. This small, focused exhibition celebrates the president’s second inaugural ball, held on March 6, 1865 in what is now the museum’s historic home. The ball took place as Lincoln’s second term began, with the Civil War in its final stages, and only six weeks before Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater nearby. From pomp and politics to feasting and fights over food, this was one night destined for the history books. View

Delicate watercolors, finely wrought sketches, and bold modernist studies by artists such as Winslow Homer and Georgia O'Keeffe comprise this special installation from the American Art Museum's permanent collection. View

For more than thirty years, Frank Gohlke (b. 1942), a leading figure in American landscape photography, has explored the ways Americans build their lives in a natural world that rarely fits within a traditional pastoral ideal. This mid-career retrospective, which captures Gohlke's longstanding fascination with nature's proclivities for growth, destruction and unexpected change, features 79 black-and-white and color photographs. View

This exhibition features 56 paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's permanent collection that range from portraits to cityscapes and images of city life to landscapes and depictions of rural life. Created by artists from across the United States as part of the Public Works of Art Program, the paintings are a lasting visual record of America at a specific moment in time. View

American Art through 1940, on the second floor, links artworks to major moments in America's past, from the American Colonies and the founding of the new republic to western art featuring expansion and discovery, to Civil War photographs, impressionist paintings, a selection of WPA murals and early modernist works. View

Paintings by Edward Hopper entice visitors to the American Experience, introductory galleries on the first floor. Landscapes from across the United States are on display in this suite, including 19th-century paintings and modern and contemporary paintings and sculpture, which convey a sense of place and the defining role of land in the American imagination. The landscape galleries are paired with photography galleries that present a selection of 56 photographs from Lee Friedlanders series The American Monument (1963-2001), a recent museum acquisition. View

Art created since 1945 is featured in galleries dedicated to Abstract Expressionism, Color Field and Pop Art. Paintings and sculpture by major artists such as Christo, Gene Davis, Willem de Kooning, Morris Louis, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Anne Truitt are on display. Works by video artist Nam June Paik also are on view in these galleries. View

The Smithsonian American Art Museum commissioned MVSEVM, a delightful new sculpture by David Beck, which debuted at the museum's grand opening on July 1, 2006. This exquisitely crafted world in miniature is inspired by the neoclassical architecture of the museum's historic Greek Revival building and presents aspects of the museum's collections and the building's history from the 1840s when it was Washington’s Patent Office and its first museum to the present day. The piece is on view in the south lobby on the second floor. View

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's most recent acquisition is For SAAM, a major site-specific light sculpture by Jenny Holzer. It is the artist's first cylindrical column of light and text created from white electronic LEDs (light emitting diodes) and the only Holzer on public view in Washington, D.C. View

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center, the first visible art storage and study center in Washington, provides new ways to experience American art. It features more than 3,300 artworks including paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures, contemporary craft and folk art objects arranged on shelves; and portrait miniatures, bronze medals and contemporary jewelry and in drawers that slide open with the touch of a button. View

The Lunder Conservation Center, the first of its kind, allows the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the essential preservation work that takes place in museums every day. Conservation staff are visible to the public through floor-to-ceiling glass walls that allow visitors to see firsthand all the techniques that conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks. View

Many recently acquired major works by modern and contemporary artists, including Deborah Butterfield, Duane Hanson, Jenny Holzer, James Rosenquist, and Sean Scully, are now on view. Several emotionally powerful works, such as David Hockney’s Snails Space with Vari-Lites, ‘Painting as Performance,’ Edward and Nancy Kienholz’s Sollie 17 and Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii are not to be missed in the museum’s soaring Lincoln Gallery. View

Paul Manship (1885-1966) was one of the most famous exponents of Art Deco in the United States. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has installed 25 of his graceful sculptures near the museum’s G Street lobby. View

Renovating a Landmark: From Patent Office to Reynolds Center coincides with the November 18 public opening of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. The completion of the courtyard marks the final phase of a major renovation of the National Historic Landmark building that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. View

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard is a signature element of the renovated National Historic Landmark building that houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The enclosed courtyard with its elegant glass canopy designed by the world-renowned architectural firm Foster + Partners provides a distinctive, contemporary accent to the museums' Greek Revival building.  View

The museum's Folk Art galleries display objects that affirm the basic human impulse to create. James Hampton's The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, a visionary work made from salvaged materials covered in gold and silver foilperhaps the artwork most beloved by visitors—is installed in a special niche in the Folk Art galleries. View

Featuring sixty-one pieces ranging in date from the late 19th century to the present, this exhibition presents subjects as diverse as General John J. Pershing, Buffalo Bill Cody, Joe Louis, Judy Garland, aviator Jimmy Doolittle and labor leader Lane Kirkland. Dramatic, colorful and often enormous, these likenesses hardly seem subtle. But what a poster communicates about an individual is usually secondary to its principal messageselling war bonds, announcing the arrival of the circus, advertising a product or publicizing a concert or film. Posters invariably project the public image, enhancing, promoting, exploiting or upgrading the information we subconsciously absorb about celebrities. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

The year 2008 marks the 225th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris which ended the American Revolution. To commemorate this event, the National Portrait Gallery is showing the earliest surviving full-length oil portraits of North American Native people painted from life. In 1710, four men were chosen to represent the Iroquoian Confederacy of the Mohawk River Valley before Queen Anne to highlight the plight of the colonies in the English military offensive against the French. The men were presented to the royal court as kings. John Verelst was commissioned to paint a portrait of each of the visitors, and he did so with the decorum deemed appropriate for royalty and heads of state. Lent by the Portrait Gallery of Canada, a program of Library and Archives of Canada. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

In the exhibition Women of Our Time: Twentieth-Century Photographs the National Portrait Gallery celebrates 91 women who have challenged and changed America. Drawn from the Portrait Gallerys collection, these revealing portraits show women who have reached the summit of achievement in politics, business, arts, sports, performance, music, humanitarianism and science. The exhibition includes photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Helena Rubenstein, Hannah Arendt, Billie Holiday, Gloria Steinem and Sylvia Plath. Featuring the work of the most distinguished 20th- century photographers, the exhibition includes, among others, Philippe Halsman, Lotte Jacobi, Lisette Model, Irving Penn and Edward Steichen. Women of Our Time is as much about the art of photographic portraiture as it is a celebration of its subjects. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Photographic jewelry flourished throughout the period from 1840 to 1875 and beyond. This poignant exhibition, drawn primarily from the collection of Larry J. West, features rare and exquisite jewelry containing portraits in the 19th centurys four main photographic processesdaguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and paper prints. Produced, exchanged and treasured as tokens of affection and regard, these relics of loving attachments speak to the deepest of human sentiments. They are complemented in the exhibition by portraits (a gift from Mr. West) of some of the pioneering American photographers who created and marketed photographic jewelry, including Mathew Brady, Jeremiah Gurney, Albert Sands Southworth and Josiah Johnson Hawes. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

No American has had more written or said about him than Abraham Lincoln. To both his contemporaries and posterity, Lincoln has been an endless subject of mystery and fascination. One Life: The Mask of Lincoln will examine how Lincoln used the new art of photography to convey his image to Americans, letting them see in him what they most desired. The National Portrait Gallery will commemorate the bicentennial of Lincolns birth with this One Life exhibition that draws on its extensive collection of Lincoln portraits. The exhibition will provide many faces of Lincoln for the public to ponder. As one of the highlights, the Portrait Gallerys original cracked-plate portrait of Lincoln by Alexander Gardner will make a rare appearance (typically, a facsimile of the photograph is on view). Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Portraiture Now: Feature Photography focuses on six photographers who, by working on assignment for publications such as the New Yorker, Esquire and the New York Times Magazine, each bring their distinctive perspective on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience. Critically acclaimed for their independent fine-art work, these photographersKaty Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller and Alec Sothhave also pursued a variety of editorial projects, taking advantage of both the opportunities and the parameters that these assignments introduce. The resulting work builds upon a long-standing tradition of photographic portraiture for the popular press and highlights creative possibilities for 21st-century portrayal. Curators of the exhibition are Brandon Brame Fortune, curator of painting and sculpture; Anne Collins Goodyear, assistant curator of prints and drawings; Frank H. Goodyear III, associate curator of photographs; Wendy Wick Reaves, curator of prints and drawings; and Ann Shumard, curator of photographs. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

John Adams, perhaps our most cantankerous founding father, viewed vice presidency as the most insignificant office ever invented by man. Adams would probably have never guessed that 14 vice presidents would succeed to the presidency. This National Portrait Gallery exhibition will focus on these men, almost one-third of Americas presidents, and how theyupon the death or resignation of an incumbent or by winning election on their ownbecame president. If some still remain unconvinced about the significance of the vice presidential office and those who occupied it, Presidents in Waiting will show that most of those who succeeded to the presidency were highly capable political figures with the experience and aptitude to be president. Co-curators of the exhibition are Sidney Hart, senior historian, and James Barber, historian. View

This groundbreaking exhibition casts new light upon Marcel Duchamp (18871968), one of the most influential artists of the recent past. This show demonstrates that Duchamp harnessed the power of portraiture and self-portraiture both to secure his reputation as an iconoclast and to establish himself as a major figure in the art world. In the process, he played a key role in the reinvention of portraiture, exerting a transformative influence from the early 20th century to the present. The exhibition showcases approximately 100 portraits and self-portraits of Duchamp ranging from 1912 to the present, including works by his contemporaries Man Ray, Alfred Stieglitz, Francis Picabia and Florine Stettheimer, as well as portraits by a more recent generation of artists, such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Sturtevant, Yasumasa Morimura, David Hammons, Beatrice Wood and Douglas Gordon. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue distributed by MIT Press, featuring new research by leading scholars and a detailed chronology of Duchamps life. Co-curators for the exhibition are Anne Collins Goodyear, assistant curator of prints and drawings, and James W. McManus, professor of art history, California State University Chico. View

Two additional exhibitions feature particular themes in American life. “Bravo!” showcases individuals who have brought the performing arts to life, beginning with P. T. Barnum, who raised the curtain on modern entertainment in the late 19th century, and continuing through the present. “Champions” salutes the dynamic American sports figures whose impact extends beyond the athletic realm and makes them a part of the larger story of the nation. A lively combination of portraits, artifacts, memorabilia and videos enhance both exhibitions. View

The nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, this exhibition lies at the very heart of the Portrait Gallery’s mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it. The exhibition showcases an enhanced and extended display of multiple images of the past 42 presidents of the United States, including the greatest historical painting in the nation’s history, Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington. Also included are the famous “cracked plate” image of Abraham Lincoln and whimsical sculptures of Presidents Johnson, Carter and Nixon by noted caricaturist Pat Oliphant. Five presidents are given expanded attention because of their significant impact on the office: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. View

A “conversation about America” is on view in a series of 17 galleries and alcoves chronologically arranged to take the visitor from the days of contact between Native Americans and European explorers through the struggles of independence to the Gilded Age. Major figures from Pocahontas to Chief Joseph, Alexander Hamilton to Henry Clay, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Harriet Beecher Stowe are among those included.

Three of the galleries are devoted exclusively to the Civil War, examining this conflict in depth. A group of modern photographic prints produced from Mathew Brady’s original negatives complement the exhibition. Highlights from the Gallery’s remarkable collection of daguerreotypes, the earliest practical form of photography, are on view in “American Origins,” making the National Portrait Gallery the first major museum to create a permanent exhibition space for daguerreotype portraits of historically significant Americans. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Fourteen portraits in bronze and terra-cotta made by renowned American sculptor Jo Davidson between 1908 and 1946 include depictions of Gertrude Stein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist John Marin and Lincoln Steffens. View

The Lunder Conservation Center, the first of its kind, allows the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the essential preservation work that takes place in museums every day. Conservation staff are visible to the public through floor-to-ceiling glass walls that allow visitors to see firsthand all the techniques that conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks. View

Renovating a Landmark: From Patent Office to Reynolds Center coincides with the November 18 public opening of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. The completion of the courtyard marks the final phase of a major renovation of the National Historic Landmark building that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. View

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard is a signature element of the renovated National Historic Landmark building that houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The enclosed courtyard with its elegant glass canopy designed by the world-renowned architectural firm Foster + Partners provides a distinctive, contemporary accent to the museums' Greek Revival building.  View

Four newly created galleries off of the museum’s magnificent third-floor Great Hall showcase the major cultural and political figures of the 20th century. From the reform movement of the first two decades to the movements for social justice and civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s and from World War I to the Persian Gulf War, visitors can follow the unceasing struggle to achieve the American ideal. View