Past Exhibitions

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the twentieth century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and

This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World showcases the dynamic landscape of American craft today.

Step into a floral oasis in the Kogod Courtyard with Orchids: Hidden Stories of Groundbreaking Women, an exhibition that unearths stories of women who have enriched the understanding and appreciation of orchids.

New Glass Now documents the innovation and dexterity of artists, designers, and architects from around the world working in the challenging material of glass.

This exhibition brings to life the Venetian glass revival of the nineteenth century on the famed island of Murano and the artistic experimentation the city inspired for artists such as John Singer Sargent and James McNeill Whistler.

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.

The groundbreaking exhibition Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture reveals how the influential naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American

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 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 engagem

In the 1960s, activist Chicano artists forged a remarkable history of printmaking that remains vital today.

Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists is the first major thematic exhibition to explore the artistic achievements of Native women.

Japanese-born artist Chiura Obata’s seemingly effortless synthesis of different art traditions defies the usual division between “East” and “West.” This exhibition presents the most comprehensive survey of his rich and varied body of work to date, from bo

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.

In his delicately rendered sculptures in clay, glass, and metal, Michael Sherrill seeks to elicit a sense of wonder from viewers, and to make them see the natural world anew.

Ginny Ruffner (b. 1952) is a glass artist best known for her elegant sculptures and mastery of glass techniques.

Populated with toy cowboys and cavalry, Barbie dolls and baseball players, David Levinthal’s photographs reference iconic images and events that shaped postwar American society.

Artists used preliminary models—or maquettes—to communicate their ideas.

Through maps, videos, and paintings that highlight the voices and stories of former Vietnamese refugees, Tiffany Chung probes the legacies of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975 makes vivid an era in which artists endeavored to respond to the turbulent times and openly questioned issues central to American civic life.

Orchids: Amazing Adaptations is a joint collaboration with SAAM, the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Gardens, and the U.S. Botanic Garden. This installation fills the museums’ courtyard with hundreds of orchids of stunning variety.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world.

Disrupting Craft presents the work of Tanya Aguiñiga, Sharif Bey, Dustin Farnsworth, and Stephanie Syjuco, four artists who challenge the conventional definitions of craft by imbuing it with a renewed sense of emotional purpose, inclusiveness, and activis

This exhibition presents some of the most treasured paintings and sculpture from SAAM’s permanent collection, including artworks by Will Barnet, Isabel Bishop, Paul Cadmus, Edward Hopper, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jacob Lawrence, George Tooker, among others.

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.

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.

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.

David Best’s Temple transforms the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon into a glowing sanctuary, offering visitors a quiet place to reflect and pay tribute to lost loved ones.

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man presents large-scale artworks by individual artists and collectives from this annual desert gathering that highlight the ingenuity and creative spirit of this cultural movement.

Do Ho Suh’s immersive architectural installations—unexpectedly crafted with ethereal fabric—explore the global nature of contemporary identity as well as memory, migration, and our ideas of home.

Tamayo: The New York Years is the first exhibition to explore the influences between this major Mexican modernist and the American art world.