Art + Artists

Featured Exhibitions

Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination

June 28, 2019–January 5, 2020

Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)

Ginny Ruffner (b. 1952) is a glass artist best known for her elegant sculptures and mastery of glass techniques. Recently, she has created work that combines traditional glass sculpture with Augmented Reality (AR) technology to create an interactive viewer experience. Visitors to the exhibition "Reforestation of the Imagination" will use a downloadable app that superimposes digital information over seemingly barren sculptures, creating two distinct realities to explore.
Michael Sherrill Retrospective

June 28, 2019–January 5, 2020

Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)

In his delicately rendered sculptures in clay, glass, and metal, Michael Sherrill seeks to elicit a sense of wonder from viewers, and to make them see the natural world anew. Sherrill’s most recent work reveals his naturalist’s sensitivity to botanical wonders, especially those outside his studio in the mountains of North Carolina. This retrospective aligns Sherrill's work with a long history of a reverence for nature in American art.
American Myth & Memory: David Levinthal Photographs

June 7, 2019 — October 14, 2019

Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)

Populated with toy cowboys and cavalry, Barbie dolls and baseball players, David Levinthal’s photographs reference iconic images and events that shaped postwar American society. Despite their playful veneer, Levinthal’s images provide a lens through which to examine the myths and stereotypes lurking within our most beloved pastimes and enduring heroes. In doing so, Levinthal encourages us to consider the stories we tell about ourselves—what it means to be strong, beautiful, masculine, feminine, and ultimately, American.
Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue

March 15, 2019–September 2, 2019

Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)

Through maps, videos, and paintings that highlight the voices and stories of former Vietnamese refugees, Tiffany Chung probes the legacies of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.
Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery

March 29, 2019 - Ongoing

Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)

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. The installation includes iconic favorites alongside new acquisitions.
David Best's Temple

March 30, 2018 - January 5, 2020

Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)

David Best’s Temple transforms the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon into a glowing sanctuary, offering visitors a quiet place to reflect and pay tribute to lost loved ones.

Collection Highlights

Early American Art

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

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The museum’s collection charts the nation’s growth from a young republic to an emerging world power. Landscapes extolling the nation’s geographic wonders from Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon drove and documented westward expansion. Asher Durand’s Dover Plains, Dutchess County, New York presents an idyllic landscape where man and nature coexist.

20th 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. Images of jazz and street life, farms and factories, workers and families captured a changing America

Contemporary Art

In recent years, the museum has strengthened its commitment to contemporary art through acquisitions, commissions, and exhibitions.

Art by African Americans

SAAM is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world, boasting more than two thousand works by more than two hundred African American artists. Covering centuries of creative expression, the artworks explore themes that reflect the African American experience in paintings, sculpture, prints, textiles and photographs.

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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.

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. Represented in the museum’s collection are pieces that draw on tradition and artworks that reveal a more personal vision.

Latino Art

The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Latino 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.

Photography

America’s continuing love affair with the camera can be traced through the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection, which ranges from early daguerreotypes to contemporary digital works. In 1983, the museum began to seriously collect photography. That year, more than 1,800 photographs were transferred to the museum from the National Endowment for the Arts.