Sarah Newman

James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art

Sarah Newman is the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She joined the museum staff in September 2016. Her responsibilities include research, exhibitions, and acquisitions related to the museum’s collection of contemporary art. Her research interests include the relationship between contemporary art and design, and the art of the 1980s. See full staff bio.

Exhibitions

Nick Cave: Mammoth

Artist Nick Cave invites visitors to walk among the fantastical remains of these ancient creatures.

November 21, 2025 – January 3, 2027
Glenn Kaino: Bridge

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.

July 19, 2024 – January 30, 2030
Galleries for Modern and Contemporary Art

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

September 22, 2023 – January 31, 2033
Sculpture Down to Scale: Models for Public Art at Federal Buildings, 1974 – 1985

Artists used preliminary models—or maquettes—to communicate their ideas.

May 31, 2019 – November 22, 2020
Tiffany Chung: Vietnam, Past Is Prologue

Through maps, videos, and paintings that highlight the voices and stories of former Vietnamese refugees, Tiffany Chung probes the legacies of the Vietnam War and its aftermath.

March 15, 2019 – September 2, 2019
Do Ho Suh: Almost Home

Do Ho Suh’s immersive architectural installations—unexpectedly crafted with ethereal fabric—explore the global nature of contemporary identity as well as memory, migration, and our ideas of home.

March 16, 2018 – August 5, 2018
Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated)

This exhibition of prints from SAAM’s collection features the artist’s provocative take on the Civil War.

October 13, 2017 – March 11, 2018
Donald Sultan: The Disaster Paintings

Sultan’s Disaster Paintings echo the drama of their subjects in their large scale and great physicality.

May 26, 2017 – September 4, 2017
Unreal: Photorealist Paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum

From the late 1960s through the early 1980s, Photorealist painters helped define the image of postwar America.