Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

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

Contemporary Visual Expressions

Works by visual artists Sam Gilliam, Martha Jackson-Jarvis, and Keith Morrison, all of Washington, DC, and William T. Williams of New York inaugurate the Anacostia Museum’s new galleries.

May 27, 1987 – July 31, 1987

Anacostia Community Museum

Art Display

View works by young people, ages 9-12, including linoleum block printing, silk screening, and collage construction, created during the Creative Arts Workshop July 6-31.

July 31, 1987 – July 31, 1987

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

Black Women: Achievements Against the Odds

Learn about black women whose accomplishments have changed our lives, from 1700 to 1977.

October 21, 1984 – June 30, 1985

Anacostia Community Museum

Dimensional Rapture

See a mini-exhibition of 13 three-dimensional works created from "found objects" by members of a local art sorority, Eta Phi Sigma.

May 1, 1985 – June 16, 1985

Anacostia Community Museum

Black Wings: The American Black in Aviation

See an expanded version of the exhibition circulated by SITES, including among its additional artifacts photo murals and audio-visual programs, and the flight suit worn by black astronaut Guion Bluford during preparations for his 1983 space shuttle flight.

April 1, 1984 – August 5, 1984

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

Portraits in Black: Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin

In the 1940s, the Harmon Foundation commissioned portraits of eminent black Americans to recognize their accomplishments as well as to refute racism.

April 17, 1983 – August 21, 1983

Anacostia Community Museum

"Here, Look at Mine!" - John N. Robinson and Larry Francis Lebby Art Show

John Robinson, a painter, and Larry Francis Lebby, a stone lithographer, come from different generations and geographies. Yet, vital themes of family, neighbors, and the natural environment link the artists.

November 14, 1982 – February 28, 1983

Anacostia Community Museum

Sojourner Truth Doll

View a porcelain doll, 17 inches long, a finely detailed figure of abolitionist Sojourner Truth made by San Francisco artist Cecilia Rothman.

February 1, 1983 – February 28, 1983

Anacostia Community Museum

Mary McLeod Bethune and Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet"

In commemoration of the centennial of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s birth (1882), learn more about the contributions of world-renowned educator Mary McLeod Bethune to FDR’s New Deal administration.

January 24, 1982 – September 30, 1982

Anacostia Community Museum

Anna J. Cooper: A Voice from the South

Dr. Anna J. Cooper (1858-1964) was a pathbreaking educator, scholar, writer, community organizer, and civil rights activist in Washington, DC. Photographs, artifacts, and recreated home and classroom settings document her life and achievements.

February 1, 1981 – September 30, 1982

Anacostia Community Museum

Out of Africa: From West African Kingdoms to Colonization

Learn about early African civilizations, the slave trade, the abolitionist movement and the founding of the first African republic, Liberia, in this exhibition. Music, artifacts, accounts, documents and photographs depict the many ancient kingdoms of Africa.

February 28, 1979 – June 30, 1980

Anacostia Community Museum

Children of South Africa

View 21 photographs by contemporary photo-journalist Peter Magubane.

October 15, 1979 – December 31, 1979

Anacostia Community Museum

DC Art Association - Exhibition '78

Members of the District of Columbia Art Association display artwork, including sculptures and paintings in oil, watercolor, and acrylic. Student work from Our Lady of Perpetual Help and Wilkinson Elementary School is also on display.

September 15, 1978 – November 12, 1978

Anacostia Community Museum

Phil Ratner's Washington

Artist and art teacher Phil Ratner creates drawings, sculptures, and portraits to honor his hometown of Washington, DC. His students at Anacostia High School contribute drawings and a mural to the exhibition.

April 16, 1978 – August 27, 1978

Anacostia Community Museum

The Frederick Douglass Years

See 42 panels that trace the life and times of Frederick Douglass, the "Sage of Anacostia", as a slave, in the Abolitionist Movement, through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and as an elder statesman.

February 12, 1978 – April 2, 1978

Anacostia Community Museum

The Anacostia Story: 1608-1930

Follow the history and development of Anacostia, a neighborhood in southeast Washington, DC from pre-1608 to 1930.

March 6, 1977 – January 8, 1978

Anacostia Community Museum

Flags of Famous Black Military Units

View reproductions of 7 flags representing the participation of blacks in U.S. military forces from the American Revolution through World War II.

February 13, 1977 – March 31, 1977

Anacostia Community Museum

Black Women: Achievement Against the Odds

Learn about black women whose accomplishments have changed our lives, from 1700 to 1977.

February 8, 1976 – January 2, 1977

Anacostia Community Museum

John N. Robinson: A Retrospective

John N. Robinson began to paint at the age of twelve and studied art with Professors James V. Herring and James A. Porter at Howard University. In the late 1920s, he moved from northwest Washington, DC to Anacostia, a neighborhood in the city’s southeast. Inspired by daily life in Anacostia, he painted family, neighbors, landscapes and lilacs. The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum presents this retrospective in cooperation with the Corcoran Gallery of Art, part of the Corcoran’s Bicentennial year series featuring the work of Washington, DC artists. The exhibition will be at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from June 18 through July 30, 1976.

May 9, 1976 – June 13, 1976

Anacostia Community Museum

Blacks in the Westward Movement

View historical and biographical materials that illustrate the role of Blacks as explorers, settlers, wranglers, trail bosses, soldiers, government agents, rustlers, and con men in the western expansion of the U.S.

September 14, 1975 – January 4, 1976

Anacostia Community Museum

East Bank Artists

The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum creates a communal space for artists working east of the Anacostia River in Washington, DC to share their work.

June 15, 1975 – August 24, 1975

Anacostia Community Museum

Blacks in the Westward Movement

Historical and biographical materials show, in a western environment, Blacks in all phases of life--explorers, settlers, wranglers, trail bosses, soldiers, government agents, rustlers and con men.

February 9, 1975 – June 1, 1975

Anacostia Community Museum