Exhibitions

A sculptural jacket made of strips of fabric, which hang down.
Sightlines: Chinatown and Beyond
September 7, 2024November 30, 2025
Sightlines provides glimpses into the complexity and depth of Asian American connections to Washington, DC.
Media - 2022.51 - SAAM-2022.51_3 - 146374
Tuan Andrew Nguyen: The Island
August 16, 2024May 4, 2025
This exhibition of the Tuan Andrew Nguyen's film, The Island, is shown for the first time with Bidong Spirit I, a sculpted headdress that appears in the film.
A person standing on a balcony in a historic museum looks at an undulating artwork made up of 200 golden-cast arms hanging from the ceiling.
Glenn Kaino: Bridge
Ongoing
Glenn Kaino’s powerful aerial sculpture Bridge, suspended from the ceiling of SAAM’s Luce Foundation Center, evokes the ways that even small acts can ripple through time and alter the course of history. 
Media - 2019.15 - SAAM-2019.15_1 - 137377
Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women
May 31, 2024January 5, 2025
The artists in Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women mastered and subverted the everyday materials of cotton, felt, and wool to create deeply personal artworks.
Five screen installation showing period reenactments of nineteenth-century activist Frederick Douglass.
Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour — Frederick Douglass
December 8, 2023 — December 62026
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.
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.
Colorful multi-media vase
Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery
April 19, 2023June 8, 2025
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: 1.8 Renwick 
September 18, 2020May 13, 2025
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.
Media - 1970.353.1-.116 - SAAM-1970.353.1-.116_9 - 127238
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.
Media - 1965.18.43 - SAAM-1965.18.43_1 - 64716
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.