Current Exhibitions

Welcome Home: A Portrait of East Baltimore, 1975-1980

July 16, 2021 — January 17, 2022

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

Welcome Home: A Portrait of East Baltimore, 1975-1980 captures a cross-section of East Baltimore residents and businesses in the 1970s, documenting the community’s history and diversity. These photographs by Elinor Cahn, Joan Clark Netherwood, and Linda Rich were taken as part of a program of photography surveys sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts to celebrate the bicentennial of founding of the United States.
¡Printing the Revolution! The Rise and Impact of Chicano Graphics, 1965 to Now

May 14, 2021 — August 8, 2021

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.
New on View: Dawoud Bey and William H. Johnson

May 14, 2021 — August 8, 2021

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

This focused installation features recently acquired photographs by Dawoud Bey in conversation with a painting by William H. Johnson that refer to the Underground Railroad.
Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020

May 14, 2021 — August 15, 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.
The Automobile and American Art

Ongoing

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

Take a road trip through SAAM’s collection to find links between automobiles and American art, inspired by Albert H. Small’s gift of model cars.
Janet Echelman’s 1.8 Renwick

Ongoing

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.
Galleries for Folk and Self-Taught Art

Ongoing

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.
Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery

Ongoing

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.
Experience America

Ongoing

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.
Galleries for Modern and Contemporary Art

Temporarily Closed

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

Note: Galleries on the museum’s third floor where modern and contemporary artworks are displayed, including the Lincoln Gallery, temporarily closed to the public on July 12, 2021 to make way for new artworks and new stories.