Exhibitions in Washington, DC

National Gallery of Art · Free

Four paintings across six centuries — Titian, Cezanne and Rozeal. — hung together to show how artists answer the art history they inherit.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden · Free

Pendleton's first solo show in Washington, DC fills the second-floor inner ring with new and recent paintings plus a single-channel video, staged for the museum's circular galleries.

Smithsonian American Art Museum · Free

Nick Cave remakes the galleries as a dig site: crafted mammoth hides and bones, a video of the beasts come alive, and hundreds of found objects laid out like specimens.

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens

The first exhibition devoted to Hillwood's textiles: 17th-century point de France lace, an 18th-century pearl-trimmed Russian liturgical panel, and new fibre work by Manca Ahlin and Sophia Narrett.

National Portrait Gallery · Free

An encore hang of 20 vintage prints by MGM's in-house glamour portraitist — Garbo, Harlow, Crawford, Gable and Dietrich, lit to look immortal.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

Over 80 quilts trace the Second Great Migration west, carried as warmth, ancestral memory and emblems of cultural survival by Black families settling in California.

National Museum of the American Indian · Free

The first major retrospective of Hoocąk sculptor Truman Lowe: nearly 50 works in willow, feathers and pigment that evoke the rivers, waterfalls and canoes of the Wisconsin woodlands.

The Phillips Collection

Around 90 works from the 1920s to the mid-1960s tracing the friendship of Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko, forged over shared summers in Gloucester. Many shown publicly for the first time.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

Marlo Pascual (1972-2020) enlarged, shattered and folded anonymous thrift-store photographs into uncanny Plexiglas sculptures that blur the line between picture and object.

Dumbarton Oaks Museum & Gardens · Free

A vivid portrait of Robert Woods Bliss as an early twentieth-century collector, drawn from the estate's own holdings. Special Exhibitions Gallery.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden · Free

Six bodies of work made in Texas between the late 1930s and early 1950s by the abstract photographer and teacher Carlotta Corpron, drawn from a recent gift of 48 prints plus loans.

Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens

A long-term loan portrait of Lloyd Walton Patterson, who travelled to Soviet Russia in 1932 for the film Black and White and stayed, opening up the history of Black Americans in the USSR.

Smithsonian American Art Museum · Free

225 photographs from the NEA's Bicentennial-era survey projects, reuniting a 1970s portrait of America and setting it against federal survey photography going back to the 19th century.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

Gallery-scale sculptures, maquettes and a new film on Beverly Pepper (1922-2020), pairing with her outdoor installation along New York Avenue right outside the museum's door.

Folger Shakespeare Library · Free

Curated by Patricia Akhimie, some 100 photographs, playbills, diaries and costumes trace 450 years of Black women engaging Shakespeare, from Phillis Wheatley to Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

National Portrait Gallery · Free

The museum turns its lens on its own building: the early Patent Office, told through portraits of Andrew Jackson, Samuel Morse and Lincoln, the only president to hold a patent.

Library of Congress · Free

Library collections trace how Americans have argued with, rallied around and reached for the Declaration of Independence — its ideals of equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden · Free

Ten room-swallowing installations trace immersive art from the late 1960s on — Flavin, Gilliam, Irwin, Pape and Long, then Chan, Eliasson, Finch, Johnson and Rottenberg. Five shown here for the first time.

National Archives Museum · Free

America250 show marking the Declaration's 250th anniversary, in three parts: the Revolution, the preservation of the original parchment, and how Americans have celebrated independence since 1776.

National Museum of Asian Art · Free

How Charles Lang Freer used his Detroit home as a proving ground for what became the first national art museum of the United States.

National Portrait Gallery · Free

New portraits of the 2025 award winners — Jamie Dimon, Temple Grandin, Joy Harjo and Steven Spielberg — including commissions by David Lenz and Kate Capshaw.

National Portrait Gallery · Free

The photographs department turns fifty with more than one hundred works spanning the daguerreian era to the digital age.

National Museum of American History · Free

The overlooked history of a trailblazing Filipino community in California, from the 1910s to the 1970s.

National Museum of Asian Art · Free

Edo-period maki-e lacquer from the collection of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant: gold-on-black hairpins, combs, boxes and a princess's litter.

Anacostia Community Museum · Free

Ahead of the museum's 60th anniversary, this show asks how Washingtonians keep their own history - anchored by the diary of Adam Francis Plummer, with letters, photographs and hands-on archiving stations.

National Museum of Women in the Arts

The museum-wide collection installation, rejecting chronology for themes like Photo Credit, Seeing Red and Objectified across six continents and six centuries of women artists.

National Museum of the American Indian · Free

Original treaties on loan from the National Archives, wampum belts and peace medals tell the story of US–Native diplomacy from the colonial era to the present.

National Portrait Gallery · Free

Nine modern prints struck from Mathew Brady's original Civil War-era negatives — Lincoln, Hawthorne, Grant and Emma, Queen of Hawai'i — shown with a glass plate and Brady's wooden storage box.

National Museum of American History · Free

From the streets of Havana to the dance floors of New York and beyond, this bilingual show traces how salsa grew into a defining sound of the United States.

National Museum of Asian Art · Free

On the Freer plaza facing the National Mall, a monumental empty plinth held aloft by hundreds of small striding figures, questioning who monuments are for.

National Museum of Natural History · Free

America's national mammal, from 100,000 years of shaping the prairie to near-extinction and recovery. A six-foot bull bison, an ancient bison skull and a North American prairie soundscape.

National Museum of Natural History · Free

More than 600 specimens and cultural belongings from all 50 states, DC and five US territories — fossils, minerals and treasures chosen to represent every corner of the country.