Exhibitions
Online Exhibitions
Available indefinitely, the Smithsonian American Art Museum's online exhibitions complement and extend our gallery and traveling shows. To see what exhibitions are presently on view or on tour, take a look at our Current, Upcoming, and Traveling exhibition schedule.
- Multiplicity features 83 works from the museum's permanent collection by such outstanding contemporary artists as John Baldessari, John Cage, Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, R. Luke DuBois, Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Julie Mehretu, Martin Puryear, Susan Rothenberg, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker.
- Inventing a Better Mousetrap features thirty-two models illustrating the wide variety of nineteenth-century patented inventions submitted by inventors from across the United States.
- Something of Splendor: Decorative Arts from the White House. This exhibition allows visitors to explore the history of the decorative arts in the nation's foremost home. It includes 95 objects - furniture, ceramics, metals, glass and textiles - from the permanent collection of the White House.
- The Great American Hall of Wonders examines the nineteenth-century American belief that the people of the United States shared a special genius for innovation.
- History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 presents the work of silversmith Ubaldo Vitali, ceramic artist Cliff Lee, glass artist Judith Schaechter, and furnituremaker Matthias Pliessnig.
- To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America captures a 1940s America that was rendered fragile by the Great Depression and made anxious by a global conflict.
- Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow is the first major survey of the artist's work and features 47 paintings and works on paper from private and public collections.
- A Revolution in Wood: The Bresler Collection celebrates the magnificent gift of sixty-six pieces of turned and carved wood to the Smithsonian American Art Museum by the noted collectors, Fleur and Charles Bresler.
- Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg is the first major exhibition to explore in-depth the connections between Norman Rockwell's iconic images of American life and the movies.
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Graphic Masters: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is American Art's third exhibition of works on paper by American artists from the collection of the museum.
Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 is the fourth in a biennial exhibition series, established in 2000, that honors the creativity and talent of craft artists working today.
Through video, photography and blog posts, explore the complex processes of installation artist Jean Shin as part of the American Art Museum's 2009 Exhibition Jean Shin: Common Threads
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, celebrates the extraordinary variety and accomplishment of American artists' works on paper drawn exclusively from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
A series of features exploring artworks commissioned by the FDR's Public Works of Art Program through 1934: A New Deal for Artists.
Artful Abe: Celebrating the life and visual legacy of Abraham Lincoln through art and artists inspired by the nation's 16th president!
- Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass
Anatomy of a Painting: Honoré Sharrer's Tribute to the American Working People (via The Smithsonian Archives of American Art)
The workshop of Joseph Cornell's Wonderland from the exhibition Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination
Behind the scenes of the Renovation of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's National Historic Landmark building
The conservation of William H. Johnson's Portrait of a Man
The conservation of Harry Bertoia's Sculpture Group Symbolizing World's Communication in the Atomic Age
Treasures to Go series
Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Gilded Age: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Modernism and Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Scenes of American Life: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Contemporary Folk Art: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
American Kaleidoscope: Themes and Perspectives in Recent Art
Lia Cook: Material Allusions and Mark Lindquist: Revolutions in Wood
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