Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

19th-Century Photographs from Sri Lanka

See 22 photographs were taken by resident British photographers W. L. H. Skeen and Charles T. Scowen at the end of the 19th century when Sri Lanka was a British colony.

December 20, 1992 – May 9, 1993

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

A Glimpse of Ancient Yemen

A Glimpse of Ancient Yemen highlights a small selection of objects that were excavated from the region by the pioneer archaeologist Wendell Phillips and his team in 1950 and 1951.

August 18, 2018 – March 13, 2020

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

A Jeweler's Eye: Islamic Arts of the Book from the Vever Collection

View 160 Persian and Indian paintings, manuscripts, calligraphies, and bookbindings, that offer a comprehensive survey of the art of the Islamic book from the 11th to the 19th centuries.

November 20, 1988 – April 30, 1989

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

A Mughal Hunt

Learn how the process of determining the authorship of a painting is based on a comparison of stylistic elements in this exhibition of 17 Indian paintings by Payag.

March 13, 1994 – November 27, 1994

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur

With dazzling paintings on paper and cloth A Splendid Land reveals how artists conveyed emotions, depicted places, celebrated water resources, and fostered personal bonds over some two hundred years in the rapidly changing political and cultural landscapes of early modern South Asia.

November 19, 2022 – May 14, 2023

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

A Well-Watched War: Images from the Russo-Japanese Front, 1904-1905

View a selection of 29 woodblock prints, most in triptych format, that survey the application of this medium to reportage of Japan's war with Imperial Russia.

June 11, 2000 – November 26, 2000

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Abbas Kiarostami: Five Dedicated to Ozu

From July to September 2015, the Freer|Sackler features a series of programs highlighting contemporary moving-image works from Iran. Presented as a single-screen projection, Five pays tribute to Yasujir? Ozu, the renowned Japanese filmmaker whose work has deeply influenced Kiarostami’s films.

July 3, 2015 – September 13, 2015

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

After the Madness: The Secular Life, Art and Imitation of Bada Shanren (1626-1705)

Visit 15 works created by the artist, together with 4 later forgeries, and 2 paintings by 20th-century followers. Issues of connoisseurship, copying, and fakery are discussed.

February 15, 2003 – July 27, 2003

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Age Old Cities: A Virtual Journey from Palmyra to Mosul

This exhibition immerses visitors in the history and splendor of three Arab World cities which are major centers of world heritage—Mosul, Aleppo, and Palmyra.

January 25, 2020 – March 13, 2020

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

An American in London: Whistler and the Thames

Rarely seen drawings, watercolors, and pastels, alongside iconic nocturnes, are featured in this first major James McNeill Whistler exhibition in the Sackler Gallery.

May 3, 2014 – August 17, 2014

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

An Epic of Kings: The Great Mongol Shahnama

An Epic of Kings offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see twenty-five folios from the now dismantled manuscript—the Great Mongol Shahnama.

September 21, 2024 – January 12, 2025

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Ancient Chinese Jades and Bronzes

See Chinese bronze, jade, and turquoise pieces from the Shang and Zhou dynasties in the permanent collection.

October 1, 1989 – September 9, 1990

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Ancient Iranian Ceramics

See a distinctive type of pottery from the Sackler's collection of ancient Iranian ceramics.

July 16, 2011 – December 31, 2012

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Ancient Japan

Visit 250 objects in stone, clay, wood, bone, lacquer, bronze, and gold--dating from as early as 200,000 B.C. through the 7th century A.D.--that present the evolution of early Japanese culture and provide insight into the status of archeology in Japan today.

August 9, 1992 – November 1, 1992

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Ancient and Medieval Metalwork from Dumbarton Oaks

View 36 objects on loan from the Byzantine Collection at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.

December 16, 2005 – April 23, 2007

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Antoin Sevruguin and the Persian Image

Images by Iranian photographer Antoin Sevruguin (d. 1933) offer a pictoral history of the social and cultural history of Iran.

November 21, 1999 – May 28, 2000

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Antoin Sevruguin: Photographs of Iran

View photographs by Antoin Sevruguin, who worked in Iran from the 1880s to the 1920s.

September 30, 1990 – May 27, 1991

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Anyang: China's Ancient City of Kings

Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings features over two hundred remarkable artifacts from the museum’s permanent collection.

February 25, 2023 – April 28, 2024

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Art of Cambodia

View a group of 10th to 13th century Cambodian stone sculptures and a display of Hindu stone, bronze, brass, and terra-cotta sculptures from South India dating from the 8th through the 14th century.

August 25, 1990 – February 28, 1993

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Art of Darkness: Japanese Mezzotints from the Hitch Collection

Some 20 prints and copperplates by Hamaguchi Yozo (1909–2000) and Hamanishi Katsunori (born 1949) demonstrate the innovative use of the mezzotint technique by Japanese artists.

April 7, 2012 – July 8, 2012

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Art of India: Painting and Decorative Objects

See 15 examples of art from India, including sculpture, painting, drawing, a gold coin and 2 decorative boxes exploring the stylistic and thematic directions in 13th- through 19th-century art in India.

July 30, 1988 – April 16, 1989

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Art of Mughal India

View an exhibition of 31 works of art that traces the origins and development of a distinct Mughal pictorial style in the 16th and 17th centuries.

August 21, 2004 – February 21, 2005

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Art of the Gift: Recent Acquisitions

Art of the Gift celebrates some of the recent and promised gifts made to the museums and archives. Objects on view range from centuries-old Buddhist sculptures from Japan, Southeast Asia, and Tibet to lacquer ware and contemporary photography from Iran.

July 25, 2015 – December 13, 2015

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Art of the Persian Courts

See some 100 paintings, manuscripts, and calligraphic works from the 14th to 19th centuries that explore the influence of Persian culture across Iraq, Iran, India, and Central Asia.

November 3, 1996 – April 6, 1997

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Arts of Mughal India

These 20 paintings and 6 objects from the late 16th to the 18th century introduce the history of India's Islamic Mughal empire.

May 24, 1992 – December 6, 1992

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery