Trevor Paglen: Sites Unseen
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.
Traveling Exhibitions
The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s traveling exhibition program has circulated hundreds of exhibitions since it was established in 1951. Below are our more recent offerings.
-
-
No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man
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.
-
African American Art in the 20th Century
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is home to one of the most significant collections of African American art in the world. In 2019, SAAM organized the exhibition African American Art in the 20th Century that is traveling to several cities across the United States.
-
Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography
America’s urban streets have long inspired documentary photographers. After World War II, populations shifted from the city to the suburbs and newly built highways cut through thriving neighborhoods, leaving isolated pockets within major urban centers.
-
Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty
"Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty," the first retrospective of Penn’s work in nearly twenty years, celebrates his legacy as a modern master and reveals the full expressive range of his work. The exhibition features work from all stages of Penn’s career—street scenes from the late 1930s, photographs of the American South from the early 1940s, celebrity portraits, fashion photographs, still lifes, and more private studio images.
Offered for Tour
-
Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)
October 13, 2017 – March 11, 2018
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)This exhibition of prints from SAAM’s collection features the artist’s provocative take on the Civil War.
-
The Art of Romaine Brooks
June 16, 2016 — October 1, 2016
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)Romaine Brooks (1874–1970) lived most of her life in Paris where she was a leading figure of an artistic counterculture of upper-class Europeans and American expatriates, many of whom were creative, bohemian, and homosexual.