Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Yoshida Hiroshi: Japanese Prints of India & Southeast Asia

View 32 prints of Southeast Asia produced by Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) using a refined photographic technique he developed in the 1920s to reveal a translucent quality similar to watercolors.

August 1, 1999 – October 17, 1999

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Yokohama: Prints from 19th-Century Japan

Enjoy 80 woodblock prints that focus on the manners and customs of the foreign residents of the port city of Yokohama.

May 27, 1990 – September 9, 1990

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Yoga: The Art of Transformation

Explore how the meanings of yoga changed over time as it became a global phenomenom through more than 120 masterpieces, including 10 folios from the first illustrated compilation of asanas made for a Mughal emperor in 1602 that have never been shown in the United States.

October 19, 2013 – January 26, 2014

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Yellow Mountain: China's Ever-Changing Landscape

See prints and paintings depicting the scenic Yellow Mountain (Mount Huangshan or Huangshan) in Anhui province, arguably the most beautiful mountain in China.

May 31, 2008 – August 24, 2008

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Yani: The Brush of Innocence

See 69 paintings by young Chinese artist Wang Yani, who began painting at age 2, along with a small group of historical Chinese paintings that illustrate the artistic tradition from which her work emerges.

June 25, 1989 – October 22, 1989

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Xu Bing: Monkeys Grasp for the Moon

This whimsical sculpture, hanging from the atrium to the refllecting pool, is composed of 21 laminated wood pieces, with each forming the word "monkey" in a dozen different languages.

October 14, 2017 – March 13, 2020

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits

View 38 nearly life-sized, brightly colored portraits of members of the Qing dynasty imperial family and the social elite that range in date from 1451 to 1943.

June 17, 2001 – September 9, 2001

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Worlds within Worlds: Imperial Paintings from India and Iran

See 50 of the finest folios and paintings from the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery collections, which form one of the world's most important repositories of Mughal and Persian paintings.

July 28, 2012 – September 16, 2012

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Words in Remembrance

View Asian poetry, written between the 1st and 12th centuries on the themes of life, death, and friends who have died, illustrated by Asian calligraphers in the Washington, D.C. area.

December 1, 1989 – December 31, 1989

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing

View Chinese artist Xu Bing's seminal, best-known piece A Book from the Sky (Tianshu), along with books, scrolls, and wall posters all using 2,000 unreadable imitation "Chinese characters" that were invented by the artist to express humankind's struggle with communication.

October 21, 2001 – May 12, 2002

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Wine, Worship and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani

See more than 100 objects that provide a rich archaeological view of the ancient Asian country Colchis—land of the Golden Fleece.

December 1, 2007 – February 24, 2008

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

When Kingship Descended from Heaven: Masterpieces of Mesopotamian Art from the Louvre

See 32 objects created between 3500 B.C. and 2230 B.C. in the kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad that explore the relationship between kingship and society.

March 8, 1992 – August 9, 1992

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Waves at Matsushima

Paintings and prints record the Bay of Matsushima, an area now substantially altered by the recent earthquake and tsunami, and pay homage to Japan,

May 28, 2011 – July 5, 2011

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Visual Poetry: Paintings and Drawings from Iran

See 32 works by celebrated painter Riza Abbasi and other notable artists active in 16th- and 17th-century Iran.

December 16, 2001 – May 5, 2002

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Vietnam's Ceramics: Depth and Diversity

The twenty-three works in this exhibition reflect the wide variety of form and decoration in vessels for cooking, dining, storage, transport, and ritual. Vietnamese ceramics have been traded across Southeast Asia and to West Asia and Japan since the fourteenth century.

July 11, 2015 – June 10, 2016

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Variations on a Script (Islamic Calligraphy from the Vever Collection)

View 21 examples of Islamic calligraphy from the Vever Collection.

February 18, 1990 – September 16, 1990

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Unstill Waters: Contemporary Photography from India

Through still and moving image, seriality, and portraiture, five leading contemporary artists explore rapidly changing natural and built environments in India, from riverbanks, ancient forests, and city streets to surreal symbolic settings.

December 10, 2022 – June 11, 2023

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Unearthing Arabia: The Archaeological Adventures of Wendell Phillips

The exhibition highlights Phillips’s key expedition finds, recreates his adventures (and misadventures), and conveys the thrill of discovery on the last great archaeological frontier.

October 11, 2014 – June 7, 2015

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Underdogs and Antiheroes: Japanese Prints from the Moskowitz Collection

Expect the unexpected. The exhibition focuses on the captivating stories and urban legends of individuals living on the fringes of society in early modern Japan.

March 19, 2022 – January 29, 2023

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Twelve Centuries of Japanese Art from the Imperial Collections

See 20 calligraphic works and 56 paintings that represent Imperial patronage in Japan from the 9th to early 20th centuries, in this first major overseas exhibition agreed to by Emperor of Japan and the Imperial Household Agency.

December 14, 1997 – March 8, 1998

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Traders and Raiders on China's Northern Frontier

See some 100 metal buckles, chariot and harness fittings, weapons, tools, and vessels from northern China.

November 19, 1995 – September 2, 1996

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia

Thirty of the finest historical Central Asian ikat hangings and coats from the Freer|Sackler collections, donated by Guido Goldman, as well as seven of Oscar de la Renta’s iconic creations are on view.

March 24, 2018 – July 29, 2018

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century

View some 160 artifacts and artworks that present the cultural achievements of Timur or Tamerlane, the Asian emperor whose military conquests reshaped the social, political, and cultural climate of large parts of Iran and Central Asia during the 15th century.

April 16, 1989 – July 6, 1989

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

The World at Our Feet: A Selection of Carpets from the Corcoran Gallery of Art

The World at Our Feet showcases 6 of the finest examples of Persian, Indian, and Turkish carpets from the Corcoran Gallery of Art's collection.

April 5, 2003 – July 6, 2003

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery

The Tsars and the East: Gifts from Turkey and Iran in The Moscow Kremlin

View some 64 objects offered as lavish gifts and tributes by the Ottomans and Safavids to the Tsars, and understand the aesthetic and ceremonial etiquette they inspired.

May 9, 2009 – September 13, 2009

Asian Art Museum Sackler Gallery