Exhibitions

Pictures of Belonging celebrates three trailblazing Japanese American women artists and asserts their rightful place in American art.

SAAM's groundbreaking exhibition examines the ways in which American sculpture has shaped and reflected attitudes and understandings about race in the United States.

Sightlines provides glimpses into the complexity and depth of Asian American connections to Washington, DC.

This exhibition of the Tuan Andrew Nguyen's film, The Island, is shown for the first time with Bidong Spirit I, a sculpted headdress that appears in the film.

Glenn Kaino’s powerful aerial sculpture Bridge, suspended from the ceiling of SAAM’s Luce Foundation Center, evokes the ways that even small acts can ripple through time and alter the course of history. 

The artists in Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women mastered and subverted the everyday materials of cotton, felt, and wool to create deeply personal artworks.

A presentation of Isaac Julien’s tour de force moving image installation that interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of nineteenth-century activist, writer, orator, and philosopher Frederick Douglass.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's galleries for modern and contemporary art display selections from the permanent collection from the 1940s to the present.

SAAM’s branch location for contemporary craft, the Renwick Gallery, showcases the dynamic landscape of American craft today. Currently on view are more than 100 works in a range of mediums from fiber and ceramics to glass, metal, wood, and mixed media.

Artist to Artist features paired artworks, each representing two figures whose trajectories intersected at a creatively crucial moment, whether as student and teacher, professional allies, or friends.

Janet Echelman's colorful fiber and lighting installation, suspended from the ceiling of the Renwick Gallery's Grand Salon, examines the complex interconnections between human beings and our physical world.

SAAM’s collection of folk and self-taught art represents the powerful vision of America’s untrained and vernacular artists.

Look into America in the 1930s, a heady time when the country’s artists captured the beauty of the landscape, the industry of America’s working people, and a sense of community shared in towns large and small despite the Great Depression.