Current Exhibitions
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Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW)In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today. Many artists came of age during the civil rights, labor, anti-war, feminist and LGBTQ+ movements and channeled the period’s social activism into assertive aesthetic statements that announced a new political and cultural consciousness among people of Mexican descent in the United States. ¡Printing the Revolution! explores the rise of Chicano graphics within these early social movements and the ways in which Chicanx artists since then have advanced innovative printmaking practices attuned to social justice.
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Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020
Reopening 2021
Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 features artists Lauren Fensterstock, Timothy Horn, Debora Moore, and Rowland Ricketts. Representing craft media from fiber to mosaic to glass and metals, these artists approach the long history of art’s engagement with the natural world through unconventional and highly personal perspectives.
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Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture
Reopening 2021
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW)This exhibition reveals how the influential naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American cultural identity became grounded in our relationship with the environment.
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Janet Echelman’s 1.8 Renwick
Reopening 2021
Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)Janet Echelman's colorful fiber and lighting installation, suspended from the ceiling of the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon, examines the complex interconnections between human beings and our physical world, and reveals the artist's fascination with the measurement of time. -
The Automobile and American Art
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Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists
Reopening 2021
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW)Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists examines representations of buffalo and their integration into the lives of Native Americans on the Great Plains in the 1830s and in the twentieth century. -
Sculpture Down to Scale: Models for Public Art at Federal Buildings, 1974–1985
Reopening 2021
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW)Artists used preliminary models—or maquettes—to communicate their ideas. Varied in scale, format, and level of finish, the nine models in this exhibition offer windows into the creative process, with work by Jackie Ferrara, Sol LeWitt, Claes Oldenburg, and Beverly Pepper, among others.
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Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery
Reopening 2021
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.
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Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art
Reopening 2021
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW)SAAM’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—such as quilts—as well as artworks that reveal a more personal vision.
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Experience America
Reopening 2021
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW)The 1930s was a heady time for artists in America. Through President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, the federal government paid them to paint and sculpt and urged them to look to the nation’s land and people for subjects.