Exhibitions in Washington, DC

November 2025

November 2025 at a glance: 1 exhibition opened, 0 closed, and 9 more were on view across the city.

Truman Lowe's Feather Canoe, made from peeled willow saplings, feathers and copper wire

Installation view of Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960

Still from Shahzia Sikander's digital animation The Last Post (2010)

Titian, Venus with a Mirror, c. 1555, National Gallery of Art

Installation view of Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen at the Hirshhorn Museum

Opened in November

Water's Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe25 Nov
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.

Was on view in November

Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960to 1 Nov
Hirshhorn 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 Nov
Smithsonian 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 Jan
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.
Adam Pendleton: Love, Queento 3 Jan
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.
Portrait of Lloyd Pattersonto 31 Mar
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.
Remix: The Collectionto 16 Jan
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.
Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nationsto 17 Jan
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.
Meserve Collection Highlights: Modern Prints from Mathew Brady's Portrait Negativesto 14 May
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.
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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A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.