Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

In Memoriam: I. M. Pei

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery recognizes the life and legacy of acclaimed architect I.M. Pei with a photograph by Armenian Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh.

May 17, 2019 – June 5, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Daguerreotypes: Five Decades of Collecting

The 2018 installation of the Daguerreian Gallery celebrates the National Portrait Gallery’s golden anniversary by highlighting fifty years of daguerreotype collecting by the museum.

June 15, 2018 – June 2, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Watching Oprah: The Oprah Winfrey Show and American Culture

This exhibition explores the era that shaped Oprah Winfrey’s life and early career in TV, her talk show that dominated daytime TV for 25 years, and the ways in which she has influenced American popular culture.

June 8, 2018 – June 2, 2019

African American History and Culture Museum

Models & Prototypes

Models & Prototypes showcases the exceptional models of staircases donated to Cooper Hewitt by Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw.

December 12, 2014 – May 27, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Gen. John J. Pershing and World War I, 1917-1918

By recreating Pershing’s war office, this display gives the visitor a sense of America’s global reach and influence in World War I and reveals how the U.S. fit into a reshaped global community.

April 6, 2017 – May 27, 2019

American History Museum

Moustiers Ceramics: Gifts from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw Collection

Showcasing nearly 60 works of faience alongside prints and textiles related to the flourishing of this elegant earthenware, the exhibition celebrates the substantial gift of Moustiers ceramics from the Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw collection to Cooper Hewitt.

May 20, 2017 – May 27, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

One Year: 1968, An American Odyssey

One Year: 1968 looks back at an extraordinarily important and memorable time in American history.

June 29, 2018 – May 19, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Lincoln's Contemporaries

This exhibition features Mathew Brady’s portraits of twenty celebrities—from showman P.T. Barnum and inventor Samuel Morse to musician Teresa Carreño and clergyman Henry Ward Beecher—who reflect the diversity of American intellectual and cultural life during Lincoln’s presidency.

May 13, 2016 – May 12, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Represent: Hip-Hop Photography

Inspired by the four elements of hip-hop—DJ’s, MCs, breakdancers and graffiti—Represent showcases photographs from the Eyejammie Hip Hop Photography Collection.

March 5, 2018 – May 5, 2019

African American History and Culture Museum

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

The Historical Buddha and Friends

This exhibition features several figures that hold great meaning in Japanese Buddhism.

November 3, 2018 – May 5, 2019

Asian Art Museum Freer Gallery

Garden Inspirations

Drawing inspiration from images in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens, these miniature landscapes are small-scale works of art designed to spur creativity.

September 3, 2016 – May 4, 2019

Ripley Center

The Case of Luisa Moreno

The display features objects representing Moreno’s work as a civil rights activist and labor organizer with union pins as well as her shawl and a pamphlet to rally national attention and halt Moreno’s deportation.

July 20, 2018 – April 30, 2019

American History Museum

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse

Over the course of six months, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse will animate the vital signs of hundreds of thousands of participants in the Hirshhorn’s largest interactive technology exhibition to date.

November 1, 2018 – April 28, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Orchids: Amazing Adaptations

Escape the winter cold and step into a floral oasis in the Kogod Courtyard with hundreds of orchids of stunning variety.

February 16, 2019 – April 28, 2019

Smithsonian Gardens

Uniformed Women in the Great War

Selection of World War I uniforms on display highlighting the varied roles of uniformed women that allowed them to express their patriotism.

April 6, 2017 – April 28, 2019

American History Museum

The Peacock Room Revealed

For a limited time, enjoy the Peacock Room as Whistler saw it—as a work of art in itself. The shelves of the Peacock Room are empty prior to an installation of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain of the type that filled the room in the late nineteenth century.

January 29, 2019 – April 21, 2019

Asian Art Museum Freer Gallery

Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes

The exhibition explores Von Heyl’s groundbreaking practice since 2005, presenting deeply visceral paintings that upend conventional assumptions about composition, beauty, form, narrative, and artistic subjectivity.

November 8, 2018 – April 21, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

A Perfect Harmony: American Art

Juxtaposing American and Asian art is a legacy of the founder of our museum, Detroit industrialist Charles Lang Freer. He believed in a universal language of beauty that resonated across time, space, and cultural diversity.

October 14, 2017 – April 15, 2019

Asian Art Museum Freer Gallery

Circle of Dance

Learn how music and dance continue to bind American Indian communities to all living things, to the earth, to the spirit world, and—when people have deep ancestral claims to their dances—to the past.

October 6, 2012 – April 14, 2019

American Indian Museum New York

Tablescapes: Designs for Dining

Three distinct table settings from different time periods illuminate how design transforms the ritual of communal dining in response to cultural and social changes.

October 5, 2018 – April 14, 2019

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor

Bill Traylor is one of the most celebrated American self-taught artists. His drawn and painted imagery embodies the crossroads of multiple worlds: black and white, rural and urban, old and new.

September 28, 2018 – April 7, 2019

American Art Museum

Henrietta Lacks

The Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery recognizes the life of Henrietta Lacks with the installation of a 2017 portrait by Kadir Nelson.

May 15, 2018 – March 31, 2019

Portrait Gallery

Emily Howland Photography Album

The Emily Howland photography album containing a previously unknown portrait of abolitionist and Underground Railroad-conductor Harriet Tubman is on view.

March 25, 2019 – March 31, 2019

African American History and Culture Museum

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