Exhibitions in Washington, DC
October 2026
October at a glance: 6 exhibitions opening, 2 closing, and 37 more on view across the city.
Opening in October
Harbingers3 OctIA&A at Hillyer · Free
Katherine Steichen Rosing suspends dozens of 10-foot linen columns, inked and charred by candle flame, into a walk-through ghost forest, with video of woodland thickening with carbon.
Re-Inhabiting Conservation: Our Shared Skies3 OctIA&A at Hillyer · Free
Over two dozen artists and writers from six countries take on wildlife conservation through creatures of flight. Curated by Heather McMordie for the nonprofit Creature Conserve.
- Light Is a Plastic Medium: The Photography of Carlotta Corpron16 Oct
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.
To Hear Her Speak: Black Women and Shakespeare16 OctFolger 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.
Beverly Pepper: Land Art and Monumental Sculptures23 OctNational 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.
Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea24 OctThe 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.
Closing in October
- Clifford Ross: Digital Waves18 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.
Remembering 9/1128 OctNational Archives Museum · Free
Current Opening the Vault rotation: unseen US Coast Guard photographs from Ground Zero, plus objects from the moment President Bush learned of the attacks, including the "Don't Say Anything Yet" note.
Also on through October
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.
Creative Aging 2026: Art Is Essentialto 8 NovThe Phillips Collection
Artwork by older adults living with memory loss, made through the museum's Creative Aging programme of gallery conversations followed by studio practice, with local senior centres and Reframing Care.
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.
- Saodat Ismailova: Melted into the Sunto 29 Nov
National Museum of Asian Art · Free
The Uzbek artist's first major US solo show: video works and photographs tracing Central Asia's landscapes, oral histories and Soviet-era ruins.
Ahn Chang-Hong: noon-moolto 6 DecAmerican University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center · Free
A major solo show filling the museum's second and third floors with the Korean artist's paintings, sculpture and multimedia, centred on his Taxidermy series on mortality.
Beyond Words: The Sacred Art of Ayesha Kamalto 6 DecAmerican University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center · Free
Large-scale mixed-media paintings by the contemporary Islamic calligrapher, turning Qur'anic verses and divine names into layered surfaces of metallic leaf, texture and intricate script.
Observer: The Street Photographs of Norman S. Carrto 6 DecAmerican University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center · Free
Presented by the Alper Initiative for Washington Art: black-and-white street photographs Carr made after a forty-year legal career, building layered compositions out of reflections in DC and abroad.
Double Feature: Two Graphic Narratives by Mary Garrardto 6 DecAmerican University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center · Free
A Project Space show of two digital graphic narratives by AU's professor emerita of art history, played out on monitors: a travelling Miami palm tree, and the Odyssey retold around its women.
- Sky Hopinka: Kicking the Cloudsto 6 Dec
National Gallery of Art · Free
Photographs, poems and film in which Ho-Chunk artist Sky Hopinka threads together family, language, place and lived Indigenous experience.
American Icon: The US Flag in Artto 6 DecNational Gallery of Art · Free
Over 30 works — Jasper Johns, Faith Ringgold, Gordon Parks, Childe Hassam, Dorothea Lange — on how the Stars and Stripes has served as pride, protest and raw material since the late 1800s.
In Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happinessto 31 DecNational 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).
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.
Interwoven: A Tradition of Textilesto 3 JanHillwood 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.
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.
Routed West: Twentieth-Century African American Quilts in Californiato 17 JanNational 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.
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.
Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Somethingto 28 FebNational 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.
- 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.
Much Here Is Beautiful: Photography Surveys of the U.S. Bicentennialto 18 AprSmithsonian 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.
The Spirit of Invention: Patent Office and Patenteesto 6 JunNational 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.
- The Declaration's Promise: A Revolutionary Ideato 3 Jul
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.
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.
A Museum in the Makingto 1 AugNational 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.
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.
We Make Historyto 2 JanAnacostia 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.
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.
Bison: Standing Strongto 31 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.
From These Lands: Sharing Our Natural and Cultural Heritageto 31 DecNational 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.
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