This summer the Renwick Gallery’s dynamic ongoing permanent collection presentation, “Connections” returns to view, featuring 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, some of which will be displayed at the museum for the first time. Nora Atkinson, The Lloyd Herman Acting Curator-in-Charge, selected the objects and conceived the innovative presentation.

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. Despite their playful veneer, Levinthal’s images provide a lens through which to examine the myths and stereotypes lurking within our most beloved pastimes and enduring heroes. In doing so, Levinthal encourages us to consider the stories we tell about ourselves—what it means to be strong, beautiful, masculine, feminine, and ultimately, American.

In his delicately rendered sculptures, Michael Sherrill seeks to elicit a sense of wonder from viewers, and to make them see the natural world anew through his exquisite works in clay, glass, and metal. This retrospective, organized by The Mint Museum, illustrates the artist’s evolution over his more than 40-year career and highlights his contributions to contemporary art, craft, and design. Sherrill is considered one of the foremost practitioners of using a new approach to traditional methods and incorporating new media and technologies into his work. Sherrill’s exceptional skills and his keen sense of materials together achieve what he calls his “natural narratives.”

George Catlin’s American Buffalo explores the artist’s representation of buffalo and their integration into the lives of Native Americans on the Great Plains in the 1830s.