Visit the Museums
Two historic locations
The Smithsonian American Art Museum shares its collections, programs, and exhibitions in two locations in Washington, DC. SAAM’s main building is located at the heart of a vibrant downtown cultural district, while its recently renovated branch museum for contemporary craft and decorative art, the Renwick Gallery, is located nine blocks west, near the White House.
SAAM
Open Daily 11:30 A.M.–7:00 P.M.
Free Admission
American art museum featuring works from the colonial era to the present
8th and F Streets, NW
Washington, DC 20004
More on Visiting SAAM
Renwick Gallery
Open Daily 10:00 a.m.–7:00 p.m.
Free Admission
Branch museum featuring contemporary craft and decorative arts
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
More on Visiting Renwick
Featured Exhibitions
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Orchids: Amazing Adaptations
February 16–April 28, 2019
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)Orchids: Amazing Adaptations is a joint collaboration with SAAM, the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Gardens, and the U.S. Botanic Garden, this installation fills the museums’ courtyard with hundreds of orchids of stunning variety. -
Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018
November 9, 2018 - May 5, 2019
Renwick Gallery (Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW)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.
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Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor
September 28, 2018 – April 7, 2019
Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)Bill Traylor is regarded today as one of the most important American artists of the twentieth century. His drawn and painted imagery embodies the crossroads of multiple worlds: black and white, rural and urban, old and new. His life—which spanned slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Great Migration and foreshadowed the era of Civil Rights—offers a rare perspective to the larger story of America.