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.

On The Road

• 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.

• Modern American Realism: Highlights from the Sara Roby Foundation Collection

  

  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.

Will be on 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.

• Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975

  

  March 15, 2019–August 18, 2019

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

  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.