Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay

Sublime Light celebrates more than three decades of innovation by DY Begay and showcases 48 of her most remarkable tapestries.

September 20, 2024 – July 13, 2025

American Indian Museum DC

Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces

This poignant exhibition tells personal stories of Native Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Alaska Native veterans who have served in the armed forces of the United States.

June 17, 2024 – April 29, 2025

American Indian Museum DC

Robert Houle: Red Is Beautiful

Red Is Beautiful, the first major retrospective of his work, celebrates more than fifty years of this singular artist’s remarkable career.

May 25, 2023 – June 2, 2024

American Indian Museum DC

Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces

Why We Serve honors the generations of Native Americans who have served in the armed forces of the United States since the American Revolution.

November 10, 2021 – November 30, 2023

American Indian Museum DC

Our Universes: Traditional Knowledge Shapes Our World

Focusing on Native cosmology and organized around one solar year, this exhibition explores the annual ceremonies of Native peoples as a window on their ancestral teachings.

September 21, 2004 – February 12, 2023

American Indian Museum DC

Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight

Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight features works from internationally acclaimed artist Preston Singletary (Tlingit American, 1963), and tells the story of Raven, the creator of the world and giver of the stars, moon, and sun.

January 28, 2022 – January 29, 2023

American Indian Museum DC

Kwel' Hoy: We Draw the Line

On July 29, 2021, a totem pole carved by the House of Tears Carvers of the Lummi Nation will conclude its cross-country journey in Washington, D.C.

July 2, 2021 – September 9, 2021

American Indian Museum DC

The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire

Explores the foundations of the Inka Road in earlier Andean cultures and the legacy of the Inka Empire during the colonial period and in the present day.

June 26, 2015 – June 27, 2021

American Indian Museum DC

Why We Serve: Native Americans in the United States Armed Forces

Why We Serve honors the generations of Native Americans who have served in the armed forces of the United States since the American Revolution.

November 11, 2020 – February 28, 2021

American Indian Museum DC

Patriot Nations: Native Americans in Our Nation's Armed Forces

Using art, photography and essays, the 16-panel show examines more than 300 years of Native people's contributions to the U.S. military.

January 21, 2017 – October 30, 2020

American Indian Museum DC

Section 14: The Other Palm Springs, California

This exhibition chronicles the story of Section 14, a square-mile section of land in downtown Palm Springs that forms the heart of the Agua Caliente Reservation.

March 1, 2019 – February 17, 2020

American Indian Museum DC

The REDress Project

The installation of empty red dresses centers on the issue of missing or murdered indigenous women.

March 1, 2019 – March 31, 2019

American Indian Museum DC

Trail of Tears: A Story of Cherokee Removal

This powerful exhibition takes a deeper look at Indian removal from the Cherokee perspective.

April 12, 2018 – January 2, 2019

American Indian Museum DC

For a Love of His People: The Photography of Horace Poolaw

Through the themes of portraiture, community, family, military, and performance, the exhibition gives a glimpse of Native life in 20th-century Oklahoma.

November 11, 2016 – June 4, 2017

American Indian Museum DC

E Mau Ke Ea: The Sovereign Hawaiian Nation

This exhibitions takes visitors through the history of the Hawaiian Nation, from the consolidation of the islands by King Kamehameha I, through annexation, to the rise of the Hawaiian rights movement in the late 1960s and the resurgence of Hawaiian nationalism today.

January 17, 2016 – January 2, 2017

American Indian Museum DC

Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist

This major retrospective of the Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick, includes 75 of her most notable works.

November 7, 2015 – September 18, 2016

American Indian Museum DC

Commemorating Controversy: The Dakota—U.S. War of 1862

Explore the causes, voices, events, and long-lasting consequences of the conflict between Dakota akicitas (warriors) and the U.S. military and immigrant settlers.

January 14, 2015 – December 29, 2015

American Indian Museum DC

Our Lives: Contemporary Life and Identities

This exhibition examines the identities of Native peoples in the 21st century, and how those identities—both individual and communal—are the results of deliberate, often difficult choices made in challenging circumstances.

September 21, 2004 – July 6, 2015

American Indian Museum DC

Ceramica de los Ancestros: Central America's Past Revealed

Treasures from the museum's collection of Central American ceramics shed new light on the exchange of dynamic ideas about art, culture, politics, and technology within the region’s largely unknown civilizations.

March 29, 2013 – February 15, 2015

American Indian Museum DC

Indelible: The Platinum Photographs of Larry McNeil and Will Wilson

Photographers Larry McNeil (Tlingit/Nisgaá) and Will Wilson (Diné/Bilagaana) challenge the romanticizing softness of 19th-century images of the “Vanishing Race.”

June 7, 2014 – January 5, 2015

American Indian Museum DC

Making Marks: Prints from Crow's Shadow Press

See prints by contemporary Native American artists working at Crow's Shadow Press.

January 17, 2014 – May 26, 2014

American Indian Museum DC

Our Peoples: Giving Voice to Our Histories

This exhibition discusses events that shaped the lives and outlook of Native peoples from 1491 to the present.

September 21, 2004 – March 14, 2014

American Indian Museum DC

Grand Procession: Dolls from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection

See how five Native American artists turn a centuries-old tradition of doll making into a contemporary art form.

April 20, 2013 – January 1, 2014

American Indian Museum DC

A Century Ago..."They Came as Sovereign Leaders"

See photographs of six great Native chiefs who participated in President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inaugural parade.

January 15, 2013 – February 25, 2013

American Indian Museum DC

A Song for the Horse Nation

Witness the epic story of the horse's influence on American Indian tribes from the 1600s to the present.

October 29, 2011 – January 7, 2013

American Indian Museum DC