Exhibitions in Washington, DC
May 2026
May 2026 at a glance: 4 exhibitions opened, 0 closed, and 22 more were on view across the city.
Opened in May
Bison: Standing Strong7 MayNational 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.
Burnished: Pueblo Pottery at NMWA8 MayNational Museum of Women in the Arts
The first focus exhibition of NMWA's Pueblo pottery collection, celebrating the women potters of the American Southwest who have shaped clay jars and bowls for over two millennia.
In Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness14 MayNational Museum of American History · Free
The museum's semiquincentennial blockbuster: 250 objects across all three floors, from Jefferson's writing desk to the 1776 gunboat Philadelphia. Closes at the end of 2026 (exact date not yet announced).
We Make History30 MayAnacostia 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.
Was on view in May
- Dear America: Artists Explore the American Experienceto 20 Sept
National Gallery of Art · Free
115 works on paper by 95 artists — Dorothea Lange, Carrie Mae Weems, Thomas Hart Benton, Roy Lichtenstein and more — grouped as Land, Community and Freedom for America's 250th.
Niagara Falls: Mist and Majestyto 20 SeptNational Gallery of Art · Free
Some 20 works trace two centuries of Niagara's shifting meanings, anchored by Frederic Edwin Church's panoramic Niagara of 1857.
- Into the Waters with Senju and Bingyi: Two Contemporary Paintingsto 27 Sept
National Museum of Asian Art · Free
Two recent paintings of water: Hiroshi Senju's poured-pigment waterfalls and Bingyi's ink scrolls, painted outdoors and left to the sea breeze and humidity.
- Clifford Ross: Digital Wavesto 18 Oct
National Gallery of Art · Free
A 23-foot screen under the West Building's Rotunda dome, where Clifford Ross builds breaking ocean waves out of millions of glowing pixels.
Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960to 1 NovHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden · Free
A century of upheaval across the second-floor outer ring: hundreds of works by Bacon, Dubuffet, Krasner, Lawrence, O'Keeffe and Pollock, rotated periodically and threaded with contemporary responses.
Shahzia Sikander: The Last Postto 8 NovSmithsonian American Art Museum · Free
A ten-minute animation in which a British East India Company man dissolves into shifting Indo-Persian miniatures, scored by Pulitzer-winning composer Du Yun.
Back and Forthto 3 JanNational 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.
Adam Pendleton: Love, Queento 3 JanHirshhorn 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.
Nick Cave: Mammothto 3 JanSmithsonian 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.
Star Power: Photographs from Hollywood's Golden Age by George Hurrell (A Sequel)to 10 JanNational 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.
Water's Edge: The Art of Truman Loweto 18 JanNational 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.
- Busy Bliss: A Collector's Passionto 28 Feb
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.
Portrait of Lloyd Pattersonto 31 MarHillwood 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.
Big Things for Big Roomsto 4 JulHirshhorn 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.
Free and Independent: A Celebration of the Declarationto 5 JulNational 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.
Portrait of a Nation: 2025 Honoreesto 17 OctNational 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.
How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Storiesto 28 NovNational Museum of American History · Free
The overlooked history of a trailblazing Filipino community in California, from the 1910s to the 1970s.
Remix: The Collectionto 16 JanNational 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.
Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nationsto 17 JanNational 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.
Meserve Collection Highlights: Modern Prints from Mathew Brady's Portrait Negativesto 14 MayNational 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.
¡Puro Ritmo! The Musical Journey of Salsato 26 NovNational 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.
- Do Ho Suh: Public Figuresto 29 Apr
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.
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