Art + Artists

Featured Exhibitions

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Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas
September 15, 2023June 2, 2024
The exhibition Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas provides an intimate view of Alma Thomas’ evolving artistic practices during her most prolific period from 1959 to her death in 1978.
J. P. Ball, Unidentified sitter, 1858–60, daguerreotype
J. P. Ball and Robert S. Duncanson: An African American Artistic Collaboration
September 15, 2023 — March 2024
This focused exhibition pairs artwork by two Black artists working in the mid-nineteenth century—photographer J. P. Ball and painter Robert S. Duncanson.
 The Protagonist of an Endless Story by Angel Rodríguez-Díaz
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea
July 28, 2023January 14, 2024
Ideas about the American West, both in popular culture and in commonly accepted historical narratives, are often based on a past that never was, and fail to take into account important events that actually occurred.
Tour Dates
  • 1
    Smithsonian American Art Museum
    Washington, DC
    July 28, 2023January 14, 2024
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Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies
June 23, 2023January 29, 2024
Musical Thinking explores the powerful resonances between recent video art and popular music.
Artist Lily Hope with an ornamental headdress
Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023
May 26, 2023March 31, 2024
Artists Joe Feddersen (Arrow Lakes/Okanagan), Lily Hope (Tlingit), Ursala Hudson (Tlingit), Erica Lord (Athabaskan/Iñupiat), Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy), and Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) present a fresh and nuanced vision of Native American art.
Quilted artwork depicting eight African American soldiers
Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery
Ongoing
SAAM’s branch location for contemporary craft, the Renwick Gallery, showcases the dynamic landscape of American craft today. Currently on view are more than 100 works in a range of mediums from fiber and ceramics to glass, metal, wood, and mixed media.

Collection Highlights

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.