Exhibitions

Media - 2023.9A-G - SAAM-2023.9A-G_1 - 147614
Carrie Mae Weems: Looking Forward, Looking Back
September 22, 2023 — July 72024 
This focused exhibition pairs two projects by Carrie Mae Weems—a major multimedia installation and a series of photographs—that revisit moments from history.
Electronic Superhighway
Galleries for Modern and Contemporary Art
Ongoing
The Smithsonian American Art Museum's galleries for modern and contemporary art display selections from the permanent collection from the 1940s to the present.
J. P. Ball, Unidentified sitter, 1858–60, daguerreotype
J. P. Ball and Robert S. Duncanson: An African American Artistic Collaboration
September 15, 2023March 24, 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.
Media - 1978.40.3 - SAAM-1978.40.3_2 - 137737
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.
Tour Dates
  • 1
    Denver Art Museum
    Denver, CO
    September 8, 2024January 12, 2025
 The Protagonist of an Endless Story by Angel Rodríguez-Díaz
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea
July 28, 2023January 15, 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
Media - 2020.54.1 - SAAM-2020.54.1_2 - 139600
Musical Thinking: New Video Art and Sonic Strategies
June 23, 2023January 28, 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.
Media - 1967.129 - SAAM-1967.129_1 - 65164
Artist to Artist
October 1, 2021May 18, 2025
Artist to Artist features paired artworks, each representing two figures whose trajectories intersected at a creatively crucial moment, whether as student and teacher, professional allies, or friends.
A close up of Echelman's installation for WONDER at the Renwick Gallery.
Janet Echelman’s 1.8 Renwick
Ongoing
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.
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Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art
Ongoing
SAAM’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists.
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Experience America
Ongoing
Look into America in the 1930s, a heady time when the country’s artists captured the beauty of the landscape, the industry of America’s working people, and a sense of community shared in towns large and small despite the Great Depression.