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.

• Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography

  

  May 11, 2017 — August 5, 2017

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

  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.

• 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.

• Irving Penn: Beyond Beauty

  

  October 22, 2015 — March 19, 2016

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

  "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.