Current Exhibitions

Museum

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Renwick Gallery

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• Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor

  

  September 28, 2018 – March 17, 2019

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

  Bill Traylor is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. His drawn and painted imagery embodies the crossroads of multiple worlds: black and white, rural and urban, old and new. His life—which spanned slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration and foreshadowed the era of Civil Rights—offers a rare perspective to the larger story of America.

• Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen

  

  June 21, 2018 — January 6, 2019

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

  Trevor Paglen blurs the lines between art, science, and investigative journalism to construct unfamiliar and at times unsettling ways to see and interpret the world around us.

• Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs

  

  April 6, 2018 — January 27, 2019

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

  This exhibition traces the history of A box of ten photographs between 1969 and 1973, telling the crucial story of the portfolio that established the foundation for Arbus’s posthumous career.

• No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man

  

  March 30, 2018 - January 21, 2019

  Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)

  No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man brings the large-scale work from this annual desert gathering to the nation’s capital for the first time.

• Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art

  

  On View Indefinitely

  Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F 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.

• Direct Carving

  

  On View Indefinitely

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

  Spontaneous! Truthful! Liberating! Direct carvers often used such words to describe their unconventional method of sculpting, in which an artist works directly on a piece of stone or wood as opposed to with a model, cast, or preconceived design.