Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Your Community, Your Story: Celebrating Five Decades of the Anacostia Community Museum, 1967-2017

Your Community, Your Story highlights some of the museum’s signature projects and demonstrates how ACM’s work helps us understand city life and strengthen community bonds.

September 15, 2017 – January 6, 2019

Anacostia Community Museum

Wrapped in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African American Identity

See nearly 200 textile art works that illustrate the rich diversity of traditional kente cloth, its historical role in African societies, and its growing popularity in the United States.

September 12, 1999 – January 2, 2000

Anacostia Community Museum

Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner - Connecting Communities through Language

Learn how the Gullah people of Georgia and South Carolina have retained traces of their West African culture and language that their enslaved ancestors brought to the Americas.

August 9, 2010 – July 24, 2011

Anacostia Community Museum

Why Vote?

See how the artist DeWayne Barton uses poetry and campaign memorabilia to fashion a personal statement about voting, the electoral process, and African American disenfranchisement.

July 11, 2005 – October 16, 2005

Anacostia Community Museum

Whose Art Is It, Anyway?: The Arts in Public Places

View an exhibition that explores the visual and performing arts in public spaces.

July 15, 1990 – September 16, 1990

Anacostia Community Museum

Who's Gonna Sing Our Song

See 25 photographs by students from the Johnson Jr. High School that document the Anacostia community.

October 3, 1992 – October 28, 1992

Anacostia Community Museum

When the Spirit Moves: African American Dance in History and Art

See more than 300 paintings, photographs, sculpture, and archival objects -- some dating to the early 1600s -- used to trace African American dance from its roots in west and central Africa through the 20th century.

December 14, 2000 – June 1, 2001

Anacostia Community Museum

Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride: African American Murals

See nearly 70 photographs and nearly 30 pieces of original art in this exhibition spotlighting historic and contemporary murals created by African Americans around the country and other artists who have or are producing pieces for public display in African American communities.

July 11, 2005 – October 16, 2005

Anacostia Community Museum

Voices & Visions of Tha Bloc: An Exhibition by Ellis L. Marsalis III

Through poetry, essays, and 31 photographs developed over the past decade, photographer/poet Ellis Marsalis III details the lives of neighbors living on one block in Baltimore City.

June 10, 2007 – August 12, 2007

Anacostia Community Museum

Visual Journal: Harlem and DC in the Thirties and Forties

The African American community is chronicled through photographs taken in the 1930s and 1940s by 6 African Americans.

April 19, 1996 – September 29, 1996

Anacostia Community Museum

Video Interview of Artists from Contemporary Visual Expressions

View a videotape showing artists from the Contemporary Visual Expressions exhibition (recently closed), speaking about their art and themselves.

August 1, 1987 – October 11, 1987

Anacostia Community Museum

Ubuhle Women: Beadwork and the Art of Independence

Learn about a new form of bead art and how Ubuhle women transform the beadwork surface into a contemporary work of art.

December 9, 2013 – January 4, 2015

Anacostia Community Museum

Two Hundred Years of Black Paper Dolls: The Collection of Arabella Grayson

Arabella Grayson's interest in finding paper playthings that looked like her evolved into a passionate journey, including this exhibition of 110 black paper dolls from her collection.

November 12, 2006 – April 29, 2007

Anacostia Community Museum

Twenty Models in Black: A Photographic Retrospective of James Hicks

See 20 black-and-white works by high-fashion photographer James Hicks that record his transformation as an artist.

September 24, 1995 – November 5, 1995

Anacostia Community Museum

Twelve Years that Shook and Shaped Washington: 1963-1975

Between 1963 and 1975, national and local change transformed the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. On display are photos, paintings, recordings, period clothing, and artifacts, such as a pen used to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

December 14, 2015 – October 23, 2016

Anacostia Community Museum

Traditions from There to Here: Mixed-Media Works by Lydia Thompson

View an exhibition that features works by artist Lydia Thompson.

June 1, 1994 – September 4, 1994

Anacostia Community Museum

To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C.

Explore how women of color draw on a long history of activism and advance environmental justice efforts.

May 19, 2023 – January 7, 2024

Anacostia Community Museum

To Achieve These Rights: The Struggle for Equality and Self Determination in D.C. 1791-1978

Celebrate the bicentennial of the District of Columbia in this exhibition that examines the African American journey toward racial equality in the nation's capital.

January 19, 1992 – November 1, 1992

Anacostia Community Museum

Through These Eyes: The Photography of P.H. Polk

See more than 100 photographs by P. H. Polk (1898-1984) portray southern life in its many moods.

October 1, 1999 – December 1, 1999

Anacostia Community Museum

Through Their Eyes: The Art of Lou and Di Stovall

See 84 works--silkscreen prints, drawings, and acrylic paintings--by 2 Washington, D.C., artists, showing their progression from posterists to master printmaker and miniaturist, respectively.

September 18, 1983 – March 4, 1984

Anacostia Community Museum

Through Their Eyes: Birney Elementary School Students Photograph Anacostia

View a photographic exhibition that includes everyday scenes, special events, residents, and places of interest in the Anacostia community by 13 students of the James Gillespie Birney Elementary School in southeast Washington, D.C.,

April 23, 2006 – October 15, 2006

Anacostia Community Museum

Three Generations of African American Women Sculptors: A Study in Paradox

View works by 10 artists that trace the history of sculpture into the present.

April 13, 1998 – September 30, 1998

Anacostia Community Museum

The Utopia Project

This interactive gallery is a space to learn the art of activism and to unlock the creativity in each of us to transform our world.

November 1, 2022 – March 1, 2023

Anacostia Community Museum

The Renaissance: Black Arts of the Twenties

Between World War I and the Great Depression, a renaissance of African American creativity in literature, music, visual arts, and performing arts flourished.

September 15, 1985 – December 29, 1986

Anacostia Community Museum

The Real McCoy: African-American Invention and Innovation, 1619-1930

African American inventors, from prominent figures such as George Washington Carver to anonymous innovators, have made important contributions to American technology.

May 21, 1989 – May 31, 1990

Anacostia Community Museum