Exhibitions

From the California coast to the Kansas heartland to the streets of New York City, the photographs in Much Here is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennial present an expansive and evocative portrait of America with a focus on .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Gold powder falls gently onto wet lacquer, shimmering. There, it transforms into plants, birds, and even scenes from stories. This Japanese art form is called maki-e (literally, “sprinkled picture”). Artists have used this method since the .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Timed with the U.S. semiquincentennial, the National Portrait Gallery commemorates the founding of its historic home with The Spirit of Invention: Patent Office and Patentees. This exhibition sketches the early history of the Patent Office—the .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Big Things for Big Rooms traces the development of immersive, large-scale artworks since the late 1960s. This presentation of 10 artworks—five on view for the first time at the Museum—is drawn largely from the Hirshhorn’s own collection. .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Art collector and American industrialist Charles Lang Freer founded the country’s first national art museum (that’s us!). Long before that, however, he worked with artists, architects, and designers to transform his Detroit home into a place .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

Presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, How Can You Forget Me explores the overlooked history of a trailblazing Filipino community in California from the 1910s to the 1970s through twenty-six steamer trunks found in 2005, .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

The life size portrait of Abraham Lincoln by W.F.K. Travers joins the America's Presidents exhibition. Created from life in 1865, the 9-foot-tall oil on canvas is one of three known, life-size paintings of the 16th president. The historic work .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.

As the nation commemorates 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, We Make History explores how history happens, is preserved, and shared. In Washington, D.C. and places around the country, many people were quietly .... Shortened snippet. View full page for more details.