Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Artists at Work

This juried show, the Smithsonian Community Committees’s fourth, pan-Institutional art exhibition, underscores the often hidden talents within the Smithsonian community. A panel of three outside jurors selected 56 artists, from 23 different units, from more than 170 entries.

February 4, 2015 – May 1, 2015

Ripley Center

Beautiful Users

Beautiful Users introduces visitors to one of the fundamental changes in design thinking over the past half-century: the shift toward designs based on observations of human anatomy and behavior.

December 12, 2014 – April 26, 2015

Cooper Hewitt Design Museum

Orchids: Interlocking Science and Beauty

Thousands of live orchids and the opportunity to explore how new ideas, technologies, and inventions change the way we study, protect, and enjoy these beautiful plants.

January 24, 2015 – April 26, 2015

Natural History Museum

2013 Nature's Best Photography: Windland Smith Rice International Awards

Witness nature and wildlife through the eyes of some of the most talented amateur and professional photographers in the world.

October 24, 2014 – April 20, 2015

Natural History Museum

Portrait of Stephen Colbert

In recognition of the end of Stephen Colbert’s decade-long persona for Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, the museum has borrowed Colbert’s portrait, which was created for the final season of the show.

December 20, 2014 – April 20, 2015

Portrait Gallery

Black Box: Ragnar Kjartansson

At the 2013 Venice Biennale, Kjartansson took over a waterside post and assembled a floating concert with a brass band aboard a small, vintage-style wooden boat. What few knew at the time, however, was that the artist was filming the proceedings from a different perspective; the resulting footage is the core of "S.S. Hangover."

October 28, 2014 – April 19, 2015

Hirshhorn Museum

Portraiture Now: Staging the Self

Discover how Latino artists approach portraiture and how they contribute to telling the full American story.

August 22, 2014 – April 12, 2015

Portrait Gallery

Days of Endless Time

The galleries will be transformed into a compelling refuge where visitors enter a poetic, drifting, reflective realm that Jorge Luis Borges once characterized in a phrase, days of endless time…

October 16, 2014 – April 6, 2015

Hirshhorn Museum

Separate and Unequaled: Black Baseball in the District of Columbia

This exhibition provides an overview of the popularity of African American baseball teams played on segregated fields in Washington, DC, from Reconstruction to the second half of the 20th century.

November 10, 2008 – March 31, 2015

Anacostia Community Museum

The Lost Bird Project

Bronze sculptures immortalize North American birds that have been driven to extinction.

March 27, 2014 – March 15, 2015

Smithsonian Gardens

Rising Up: Hale Woodruff's Murals at Talladega College

Six murals by Atlanta-based artist Hale Woodruff for Talladega College, Alabama, trace the rise of African Americans from slavery to freedom.

November 7, 2014 – March 1, 2015

American History Museum

A Day in the Life: Artists' Diaries from the Archives of American Art

Direct and private, diaries provide firsthand accounts of appointments made and met, places seen, and work in progress—all laced with personal ruminations, name-dropping, and the occasional sketch or doodle.

September 26, 2014 – February 28, 2015

Archives of American Art

The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art

Explore how contemporary artists employ bird imagery as a conduit for understanding contemporary culture.

October 31, 2014 – February 22, 2015

American Art Museum

3-D Portrait of President Obama

In 2014, President Barack Obama became the first President to be scanned using 3-D technology. Data from the scan were used to create his portraits, and a 3-D printed bust will be on view for Presidents Day weekend Friday, Feb. 13, through Monday, Feb. 16, 2015.

February 13, 2015 – February 16, 2015

Portrait Gallery

"Cracked Plate" Photograph of Lincoln

For just five days, the museum will display the original print of the “cracked plate” portrait of Abraham Lincoln. This photograph by Alexander Gardner is one of the most haunting portraits of any president.

February 12, 2015 – February 16, 2015

Portrait Gallery

Watch This! New Directions in the Art of the Moving Image

In this permanent rotating gallery dedicated to the media arts, the museum examines the history and the latest developments in the art of the moving image.

May 1, 2013 – February 15, 2015

American Art Museum

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

Horace Poolaw's photographs celebrate his subjects’ place in American life and preserve an insider’s perspective on a world few outsiders are familiar with: the Native America of the Southern Plains during the mid-20th century.

September 9, 2014 – February 15, 2015

American Indian Museum New York

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

Richard Estes' Realism

Explore the work of Richard Estes, the foremost practitioner of photorealism and premier painter of American cityscapes.

October 10, 2014 – February 8, 2015

American Art Museum

Untitled: The Art of James Castle

View a sampling of the immense oeuvre of work by artist James Castle (1899-1977).

September 26, 2014 – February 1, 2015

American Art Museum

Home Sewn: Quilts from the Lower Mississippi Valley

Through the lens of four fancy quilts, explore layers of family history, artistic traditions, and entrepreneurship that enrich the fabric of an African American community in rural Mississippi.

December 9, 2013 – February 1, 2015

Anacostia Community Museum

Souvenir Nation: Relics, Keepsakes, and Curios

What is a souvenir? What becomes a souvenir? Find out in this exhibition!

August 9, 2013 – January 28, 2015

Smithsonian Castle

Preview Case: American Enterprise

This sneak peek at the museum's renovations features a Google Cork Board server.

September 14, 2013 – January 13, 2015

American History Museum

Salvatore Scarpitta: Traveler

Featuring key additions to the Hirshhorn's collection, this is the first solo presentation of Salvatore Scarpitta's work at an American museum in over a decade, and the first ever on the East Coast.

July 17, 2014 – January 11, 2015

Hirshhorn Museum

Face Value: Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction

See how mid-20th century artists reinvented portraiture as a progressive art form for a new generation.

April 18, 2014 – January 11, 2015

Portrait Gallery