Travel back 143 years to the revelry of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball. This small, focused exhibition celebrates the president’s second inaugural ball, held on March 6, 1865 in what is now the museum’s historic home. The ball took place as Lincoln’s second term began, with the Civil War in its final stages, and only six weeks before Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theater nearby. From pomp and politics to feasting and fights over food, this was one night destined for the history books. View

Love jazz and blues? Bessie Smith and Langston Hughes? Experience the world of Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), one of the most influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist is the first nationally touring retrospective that brings together more than eighty rarely seen works by the artist including paintings, prints, drawings and illustrations. View

Nature's strength, endurance, and fragility are captured in the dynamic work of Barbara Bosworth (b. 1953). Best known for her photographs of National Champion treesthe largest identified example of each species in the United StatesBosworth creates panoramic images using a unique method that combines multiple large-format negatives in a single print. This exhibition, which celebrates a recent gift of the artist's work, will feature forty of Bosworth's photographs, including The Bitterroot River and her most recent color photographs of songbirds and the New England landscape surrounding her home near Boston. View

Explore the expressive possibilities of color in this special installation of twenty-seven large-scale paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum's permanent collection. This exhibition examines the cross influences of Washington, D.C.-based artists between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s when our nation's capital was home to one of the most dynamic artistic communities in the country.  View

Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities celebrates the deep commitment to the American landscape by these two iconic artists. The exhibition explores how both artists intensely focused their attention on beauty in nature and transformed these elements with color and tone. The exhibition includes 43 paintings from public and private collections and 54 photographs borrowed primarily from the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, which holds the largest single collection of Adams' work. View

For more than thirty years, Frank Gohlke (b. 1942), a leading figure in American landscape photography, has explored the ways Americans build their lives in a natural world that rarely fits within a traditional pastoral ideal. This mid-career retrospective, which captures Gohlke's longstanding fascination with nature's proclivities for growth, destruction and unexpected change, features more than eighty photographs. View

American Art through 1940, on the second floor, links artworks to major moments in America's past, from the American Colonies and the founding of the new republic to western art featuring expansion and discovery, to Civil War photographs, impressionist paintings, a selection of WPA murals and early modernist works. View

Paintings by Edward Hopper entice visitors to the American Experience, introductory galleries on the first floor. Landscapes from across the United States are on display in this suite, including 19th-century paintings and modern and contemporary paintings and sculpture, which convey a sense of place and the defining role of land in the American imagination. The landscape galleries are paired with photography galleries that present a selection of 56 photographs from Lee Friedlanders series The American Monument (1963-2001), a recent museum acquisition. View

Art created since 1945 is featured in galleries dedicated to Abstract Expressionism, Color Field and Pop Art. Paintings and sculpture by major artists such as Christo, Gene Davis, Willem de Kooning, Morris Louis, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Anne Truitt are on display. Works by video artist Nam June Paik also are on view in these galleries. View

The Smithsonian American Art Museum commissioned MVSEVM, a delightful new sculpture by David Beck, which debuted at the museum's grand opening on July 1, 2006. This exquisitely crafted world in miniature is inspired by the neoclassical architecture of the museum's historic Greek Revival building and presents aspects of the museum's collections and the building's history from the 1840s when it was Washington’s Patent Office and its first museum to the present day. The piece is on view in the south lobby on the second floor. View

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's most recent acquisition is For SAAM, a major site-specific light sculpture by Jenny Holzer. It is the artist's first cylindrical column of light and text created from white electronic LEDs (light emitting diodes) and the only Holzer on public view in Washington, D.C. View

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Luce Foundation Center, the first visible art storage and study center in Washington, provides new ways to experience American art. It features more than 3,300 artworks including paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures, contemporary craft and folk art objects arranged on shelves; and portrait miniatures, bronze medals and contemporary jewelry and in drawers that slide open with the touch of a button. View

The Lunder Conservation Center, the first of its kind, allows the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the essential preservation work that takes place in museums every day. Conservation staff are visible to the public through floor-to-ceiling glass walls that allow visitors to see firsthand all the techniques that conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks. View

Many recently acquired major works by modern and contemporary artists, including Deborah Butterfield, Duane Hanson, Jenny Holzer, James Rosenquist, and Sean Scully, are now on view. Several emotionally powerful works, such as David Hockney’s Snails Space with Vari-Lites, ‘Painting as Performance,’ Edward and Nancy Kienholz’s Sollie 17 and Nam June Paik’s Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii are not to be missed in the museum’s soaring Lincoln Gallery. View

Paul Manship (1885-1966) was one of the most famous exponents of Art Deco in the United States. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has installed 25 of his graceful sculptures near the museum’s G Street lobby. View

Renovating a Landmark: From Patent Office to Reynolds Center coincides with the November 18 public opening of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. The completion of the courtyard marks the final phase of a major renovation of the National Historic Landmark building that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. View

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard is a signature element of the renovated National Historic Landmark building that houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The enclosed courtyard with its elegant glass canopy designed by the world-renowned architectural firm Foster + Partners provides a distinctive, contemporary accent to the museums' Greek Revival building.  View

The museum's Folk Art galleries display objects that affirm the basic human impulse to create. James Hampton's The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, a visionary work made from salvaged materials covered in gold and silver foilperhaps the artwork most beloved by visitors—is installed in a special niche in the Folk Art galleries. View

The National Portrait Gallerys One Life gallery will be dedicated to the life of Katharine Hepburn beginning Nov. 2. Born on May 12, 1907, Hepburn was a 20th-century icon who carefully constructed and maintained her own myth, from her earliest days in the studio system through more than 50 years on stage, screen and television. The exhibition includes her four Oscar statuettesthe most won by anyone for best actressimages from her life and career and a video kiosk that will play clips from a selection of her work. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Since its inception in the 1970s, hip hop has been arguably the most influential and popular musical form in America. Starting February 8, the National Portrait Gallery is featuring the work of artists who have explored this phenomenon. David Scheinbaum has been photographing hip hop artists since 2000, both in concert and offstage, including such celebrated groups as Public Enemy, Blackalicious, Phar Cyde, De La Soul and Jurassic-5. Kehinde Wiley, best known for his large, colorful paintings of anonymous young black men, has created portraits of hip hop artists such as LL Cool J and Ice T, each based on a famous European or American painting from the 17th through 19th centuries. Nikki Giovanni has written a poem that will be transcribed onto walls in the exhibition and also interpreted artistically by artist Shinique Smith. Tim Conlon and Dave Hupp, two Washington, D.C–based graffiti artists, created four portrait murals to be installed in a hallway that connects the galleries. Jefferson Pinder created three video self-portraits that will be included in the installation. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

During his tenure as chief photographer for Cond Nasts Vanity Fair from 1923 to 1936, Edward Steichen created compelling portraits of many of that eras most celebrated personalitiesfrom Charlie Chaplin to Franklin D. Roosevelt. With their sharpened focus, dramatic lighting and bold compositions, Steichens sophisticated images captured the publics imagination and set a new standard for photographic portraiture. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the National Portrait Gallerys collection of Steichens photographs, features images from the years of his association with Vanity Fair, as well as examples of Steichens earlier portrait work. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Photographer Zaida Ben-Yusuf (18691933) was an important figure in the pictorialist photography movement in late 19th- and early 20th-century New York. The first woman to embark on building a gallery of illustrious Americans, Ben-Yusuf attracted to her Fifth Avenue studio many of the most prominent artistic, literary, theatrical and political figures of her day. Hoping to break with the conventions of the past, she was thoroughly modern, both as a photographer and a woman. Zaida Ben-Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer is the first exhibition to ever tell the story of her extraordinary life and bring together her portraits. In these images, Ben-Yusuf sought not only to portray the key figures in new New York, but also to revitalize an artistic genre that had grown stale by the end of the nineteenth century. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

The work of Herbert Lawrence Blockthe political cartoonist who drew under the pen name Herblockappeared in American newspapers for more than seven decades. Blocks presidential cartoons appeared in the Washington Post for 56 years, and this exhibition includes his depictions of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The show offers a rare opportunity for visitors to see how one of Americas greatest political cartoonists viewed the presidency for most of the 20th century. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Featuring sixty-one pieces ranging in date from the late 19th century to the present, this exhibition presents subjects as diverse as General John J. Pershing, Buffalo Bill Cody, Joe Louis, Judy Garland, aviator Jimmy Doolittle and labor leader Lane Kirkland. Dramatic, colorful and often enormous, these likenesses hardly seem subtle. But what a poster communicates about an individual is usually secondary to its principal messageselling war bonds, announcing the arrival of the circus, advertising a product or publicizing a concert or film. Posters invariably project the public image, enhancing, promoting, exploiting or upgrading the information we subconsciously absorb about celebrities. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

What Is Today's Portrait? The National Portrait Gallery invites artists all over America to investigate the contemporary art of the portrait for the second Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. Entry period for the 2009 competition is June 2 through July 31, 2008. The competition and resulting exhibition will celebrate excellence and innovation, with a strong focus on the variety of portrait media used by artists today. The National Portrait Gallery welcomes single figures, groups, or self-portraitsfrom classical drawing and painting or hyperrealistic sculpture to large-scale photography to prints and new media. The competition is named for Virginia Outwin Boochever (1920-2005), a former Portrait Gallery volunteer whose generous gift has endowed this program. For more information and to enter, visit http://portraitcompetition.si.edu. View

Two additional exhibitions feature particular themes in American life. “Bravo!” showcases individuals who have brought the performing arts to life, beginning with P. T. Barnum, who raised the curtain on modern entertainment in the late 19th century, and continuing through the present. “Champions” salutes the dynamic American sports figures whose impact extends beyond the athletic realm and makes them a part of the larger story of the nation. A lively combination of portraits, artifacts, memorabilia and videos enhance both exhibitions. View

The nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, this exhibition lies at the very heart of the Portrait Gallery’s mission to tell the American story through the individuals who have shaped it. The exhibition showcases an enhanced and extended display of multiple images of the past 42 presidents of the United States, including the greatest historical painting in the nation’s history, Gilbert Stuart’s “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington. Also included are the famous “cracked plate” image of Abraham Lincoln and whimsical sculptures of Presidents Johnson, Carter and Nixon by noted caricaturist Pat Oliphant. Five presidents are given expanded attention because of their significant impact on the office: George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. View

A “conversation about America” is on view in a series of 17 galleries and alcoves chronologically arranged to take the visitor from the days of contact between Native Americans and European explorers through the struggles of independence to the Gilded Age. Major figures from Pocahontas to Chief Joseph, Alexander Hamilton to Henry Clay, and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Harriet Beecher Stowe are among those included.

Three of the galleries are devoted exclusively to the Civil War, examining this conflict in depth. A group of modern photographic prints produced from Mathew Brady’s original negatives complement the exhibition. Highlights from the Gallery’s remarkable collection of daguerreotypes, the earliest practical form of photography, are on view in “American Origins,” making the National Portrait Gallery the first major museum to create a permanent exhibition space for daguerreotype portraits of historically significant Americans. Visit the companion website for the exhibition. View

Fourteen portraits in bronze and terra-cotta made by renowned American sculptor Jo Davidson between 1908 and 1946 include depictions of Gertrude Stein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist John Marin and Lincoln Steffens. View

The Lunder Conservation Center, the first of its kind, allows the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the essential preservation work that takes place in museums every day. Conservation staff are visible to the public through floor-to-ceiling glass walls that allow visitors to see firsthand all the techniques that conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks. View

Renovating a Landmark: From Patent Office to Reynolds Center coincides with the November 18 public opening of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard. The completion of the courtyard marks the final phase of a major renovation of the National Historic Landmark building that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery. View

The Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard is a signature element of the renovated National Historic Landmark building that houses the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The enclosed courtyard with its elegant glass canopy designed by the world-renowned architectural firm Foster + Partners provides a distinctive, contemporary accent to the museums' Greek Revival building.  View

Four newly created galleries off of the museum’s magnificent third-floor Great Hall showcase the major cultural and political figures of the 20th century. From the reform movement of the first two decades to the movements for social justice and civil rights of the 1960s and 1970s and from World War I to the Persian Gulf War, visitors can follow the unceasing struggle to achieve the American ideal. View