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Featured Exhibitions

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State Fairs: Growing American Craft

August 22, 2025–September 7, 2026

Renwick Gallery

State Fairs: Growing American Craft is the first major exhibition dedicated to artists’ contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs.

A collage with an illustration of a man with a red waist coat in the center.

Shahzia Sikander: The Last Post

July 3, 2025–July 12, 2026

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Shahzia Sikander’s video artwork The Last Post (2010) critically considers the legacy of British colonialism in Asia using her signature approach of infusing Indo-Persian miniature paintings with a contemporary perspective. 

Five screen installation showing period reenactments of nineteenth-century activist Frederick Douglass.

Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass

December 8, 2023 — December 6, 2026

Smithsonian American Art Museum

A presentation of Isaac Julien’s tour de force moving image installation that interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of nineteenth-century activist, writer, orator, and philosopher Frederick Douglass.

Collection Highlights

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Asian American Art

SAAM’s collection includes many remarkable artworks that reflect the profound and longstanding contributions of Asian American and Asian diasporic artists in the United States.

A portrait of a man with goatee contained in a brooch

Photography

In 1983, the Smithsonian American Art Museum began actively building its photography collection. That year, more than 1,500 photographs were transferred to the museum from the National Endowment for the Arts. Since then, the collection has grown to more than 9,000 works that span the history of the medium.

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Latinx Art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s leading Latinx art collection represents a profound commitment to building a great national collection reflecting the rich contributions of Latinos to our country, from the colonial period to the present.

Sculpture

The museum’s American sculpture collection is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.

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Contemporary Art

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Time-Based Media

The Time-Based Media Art Initiative at the Smithsonian American Art Museum reflects a commitment to develop the museum’s time-based media collections, research resources, and programs.

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19^th Century

The museum has one of the finest and largest collections from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, including impressionist and Gilded Age works.

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20^th Century

Artists in the twentieth century chose two distinct ways to depict modernism and the excitement of progress—realism and abstraction. Both are well represented in the collection. The museum has the largest collection of New Deal art and murals in the country.

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African American Art

SAAM is home to one of the most significant collections of works by African American artists in the world.

Map of U.S. oil, collage and mixed media on canvas

Native and Indigenous Art

SAAM is committed to collecting and sharing art by Native makers whose perspectives and experiences are shaping American culture and identity.

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Contemporary Craft and Decorative Arts

The museum’s collection of contemporary American craft is considered one of the finest in the United States.

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Folk and Self-Taught Art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists. SAAM is one of the only major museums to clearly advocate for a diverse populist and uniquely American voice within the context of what is traditionally considered great art.

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Works on Paper

Graphic arts comprise a large part of the museum’s collection, which reveals the central importance of works on paper for American artists, both as studies for creations in other media and as finished works of art.

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Early American Art

The museum’s collection begins with works from the colonies of New Spain and New England.

Something Fun

A black and white drawing of cakes by Wayne Thiebaud

See which artist shares your birthday.

A Collage of women artist featured in Drawn to Art 2023

What draws artists Laura Aguilar, Tanya Aguiñiga, Emma Amos, Chitra Ganesh, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Wendy Red Star, Miriam Schapiro, Lilly Martin Spencer, and Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, to create? Find out in a new set of Drawn to Art comics that are sure to inspire middle-grade readers and art lovers of any age.

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Art + Artists

Explore the Art

Explore Artists

Exhibitions

Research

Conservation

News & Stories

Featured Exhibitions

Collection Highlights

Something Fun