Luce Foundation Center

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Open daily, 11:30 a.m.–7 p.m.

The nation’s first collection of American art, an unparalleled record of the American experience.

Plan your visit

Renwick Gallery Stairwwell

Renwick Gallery

Open daily, 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

Located just feet from the White House, a branch of the museum that is home the nation's collection of contemporary craft and decorative art.

Plan your visit

How Do I Research My Art?

Want to learn more about the painting you found while clearing out the attic? For answers, be prepared for a little detective work.

How to Care for Your Collections

Regardless of the monetary value of your artwork, if it is personally meaningful, you should consider having the object conserved.

Recording a Changing Nation

This resource uses images from photographic surveys in 55 communities in 30 states across the United States as source documents to spark sustained inquiry.

Critical Thinking in Action

These 60-to-95-minute units pair thinking patterns with works of art to instill a thinking disposition transferable across classroom curriculum and into the wider world.

Event Venues and Space Rental

Museum Store Online

Detail of brown ceramic jar with writing and the signature "Dave" inscribed around the top.

David “Dave” Drake: Potter and Poet

Craftsman David “Dave” Drake, enslaved for most of his life, produced uncommonly large ceramic jars in 19th-century South Carolina adorned by his poetic verses

Artist Tanya Aguiñiga wearing a suit made of glass elements while standing next to the U.S./Mexico border wall

Exploring Border Stories with Artist Tanya Aguiñiga

Curator Mary Savig details an artist’s journey to create the powerful performance work Metabolizing the Border that explores the physical and psychological experiences migrants face while crossing the borderlands.

Director’s Circle

A national membership group of museum friends who share a love of American art and craft and our commitment to celebrating the extraordinary creativity of our nation’s artists.

A membership group for young professionals who are interested in immersing themselves in the American art experience.

A photograph of Abraham Thomas by Pepe Gomez

Abraham Thomas

The former Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-In-Charge, Renwick Gallery

Abraham Thomas was The Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-In-Charge for the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s branch for contemporary craft and decorative art from 2016 through 2018.

Exhibitions

Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018

Disrupting Craft presents the work of Tanya Aguiñiga, Sharif Bey, Dustin Farnsworth, and Stephanie Syjuco, four artists who challenge the conventional definitions of craft by imbuing it with a renewed sense of emotional purpose, inclusiveness, and activism.

November 9, 2018 – May 5, 2019
Parallax Gap

Parallax Gap transforms the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon into a visual puzzle. This immersive, site-specific installation explores examples of interplay between craft and architecture through a ceiling-suspended structure running the length of the Renwick’s iconic gallery. The installation embraces both Eastern and Western concepts of perspective through trompe l’oeil effects and multiple vanishing points to create a sense of soaring architectural volume.

July 1, 2017 – February 11, 2018

Books

Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018
Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018 features essays written by the jurors that explore how each artist has used their chosen media to contribute beyond the confines of the art world.