Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

We Gather at the Edge: Contemporary Quilts by Black Women Artists

The artists featured in We Gather at the Edge honor the Black story quilt tradition with work that envisions a more just and connected world.

February 21, 2025 – June 22, 2025

Renwick Gallery

Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery

View more than 100 works in a range of mediums from fiber and ceramics to glass, metal, wood, and mixed media.

April 19, 2023 – June 8, 2025

Renwick Gallery

Janet Echelman's 1.8 Renwick

Echelman’s colorful fiber and lighting installation examines the complex interconnections between human beings and our physical world.

September 18, 2020 – May 13, 2025

Renwick Gallery

Subversive, Skilled, Sublime: Fiber Art by Women

Learn how the featured artists mastered and subverted the everyday materials of cotton, felt, and wool to create deeply personal artworks.

May 31, 2024 – January 5, 2025

Renwick Gallery

Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023

Sharing Honors and Burdens focuses on fresh and nuanced visions by six Native American or Alaska Native artists.

May 26, 2023 – March 31, 2024

Renwick Gallery

This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World

This Present Moment highlights the role that artists play in our world to spark essential conversations, stories of resilience, and methods of activism.

May 13, 2022 – April 2, 2023

Renwick Gallery

New Glass Now documents the innovation and dexterity of artists, designers, and architects from around the world working in the challenging material of glass. This global survey is designed to highlight the breadth and depth of contemporary glass making.

October 22, 2021 – March 6, 2022

Renwick Gallery

Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery

Connections is the Renwick Gallery’s dynamic ongoing permanent collection presentation, featuring more than 80 objects celebrating craft as a discipline and an approach to living differently in the modern world.

March 12, 2019 – March 6, 2022

Renwick Gallery

Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020

Forces of Nature: Renwick Invitational 2020 features artists Lauren Fensterstock, Timothy Horn, Debora Moore, and Rowland Ricketts.

October 16, 2020 – August 15, 2021

Renwick Gallery

Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists

Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is the first major thematic exhibition to explore the artistic achievements of Native women.

February 21, 2020 – March 13, 2020

Renwick Gallery

Michael Sherrill Retrospective

In his delicately rendered sculptures in clay, glass, and metal, Michael Sherrill seeks to elicit a sense of wonder from viewers, and to make them see the natural world anew.

June 28, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Renwick Gallery

David Best's Temple

David Best’s Temple transforms the Renwick Gallery’s Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon into a glowing sanctuary, offering visitors a quiet place to reflect and pay tribute to lost loved ones.

March 30, 2018 – January 5, 2020

Renwick Gallery

Ginny Ruffner: Reforestation of the Imagination

Ginny Ruffner (b. 1952) has imagined a gloriously complex and colorful alternative environment that viewers can access using AR’s technological lens.

June 28, 2019 – January 5, 2020

Renwick Gallery

Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018

Disrupting Craft presents the work of Tanya Aguiñiga, Sharif Bey, Dustin Farnsworth, and Stephanie Syjuco.

November 9, 2018 – May 5, 2019

Renwick Gallery

No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man

The exhibition brings the maker culture of Burning Man alive hrough artworks, room-sized installations, jewelry, costumes, and ephemera that will transport visitors to the gathering’s famed desert location, the “playa.”

March 30, 2018 – January 21, 2019

Renwick Gallery

Connections: Contemporary Craft at the Renwick Gallery

The permanent collection returns to the Renwick Gallery with a dynamic new presentation of 80+ objects celebrating craft as a discipline and an approach to living differently in the modern world.

July 1, 2016 – February 20, 2018

Renwick Gallery

Parallax Gap

This immersive, site-specific installation explores examples of interplay between craft and architecture through a ceiling-suspended structure running the length of the Renwick's iconic gallery.

July 1, 2017 – February 11, 2018

Renwick Gallery

Rick Araluce: The Final Stop

Rick Araluce: The Final Stop transforms a gallery into an abandoned underground subway platform in the artist’s first large-scale installation on the East Coast.

October 20, 2017 – January 28, 2018

Renwick Gallery

Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death

Murder is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death explores the unexpected intersection between craft and forensic science.

October 20, 2017 – January 28, 2018

Renwick Gallery

June Schwarcz: Invention and Variation

The exhibition will be the first retrospective spanning of the artist's entire career including works never seen before in public from her personal collection. June Schwarcz was the foremost enamelist in the country and known for her innovatatively designed vessels.

March 10, 2017 – August 27, 2017

Renwick Gallery

Voulkos: The Breakthrough Years

This is the first exhibition to focus on the early career of Peter Voulkos, who completely re-invented his medium of proper ceramics technique and form. Aproximately thirty-five examples from this crucial body of early work will be featured.

April 7, 2017 – August 20, 2017

Renwick Gallery

Visions and Revisions: Renwick Invitational 2016

The seventh installment of the Renwick Gallery's biennial series celebrates artists deserving of wider national recognition presents the work of Steven Young Lee, Kristen Morgin, Jennifer Trask, and Norwood Viviano.

September 9, 2016 – January 16, 2017

Renwick Gallery

WONDER

WONDER, the opening exhibition at the newly renovated Renwick Gallery, features site-specific installations that transform the galleries into a contemporary “cabinet of wonders.”

November 13, 2015 – July 10, 2016

Renwick Gallery

Featured Object: Storage Jar (Columnar Series)

See a wheelthrown utilitarian vessel, is part of a suite of tall, columnar, lidded vessels made in the 1980s by Val Cushing.

November 1, 1990 – December 18, 2013

Renwick Gallery

A Measure of Earth: The Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets

See a collection of modern baskets that reveal the central role basketry has played in the everyday life of Americans.

October 17, 2013 – December 8, 2013

Renwick Gallery