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At the Smithsonian / Exhibitions

People crowd on road near Balogun Market to shop. Lagos, Nigeria

Step Into a Noisy, Chaotic Nigerian Marketplace at The African Art Museum

West African artist Emeka Ogboh’s installation will be the first time the museum has featured a work of sound art

The hidden significance of the illustrations found on "The Cosmic Buddha," an iconic masterpiece from the collections of the Freer Gallery, is now being revealed thanks to 3D technology.

Curators Discover New Details in the Etchings on a 6th-Century Chinese Sculpture

A headless figure, cloaked in a robe covered with complex illustrations, is now better understood thanks to 3D technology

Breaking Ground

The National Museum of African American History and Culture: Breaking Ground

Countdown begins towards the historic opening of the new national museum on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2016

Statue of Liberty stamp art, 1994, by Tom Engerman

Get Stuck on New York’s Pop Culture With These Historic Stamps

A new exhibition at the National Postal Museum spotlights Gotham’s cultural impact

The details of the last days and the circumstances of Raoul Wallenberg's tragic death have long been mired in mystery and intrigue.

Raoul Wallenberg’s Biographer Uncovers Important Clues To What Happened in His Final Days

Swedish writer Ingrid Carlberg investigates the tragedy that befell the heroic humanitarian

Ruee Gawarikar's Goddess of Visas is a humorous take on the otherwise tedious and often anxiety-ridden process of applying for a work visa. Accordingly, the style of the work is exaggerated, ironic and dramatic.

What It Means to Live Life Working in the U.S. on a Visa

A piece of paper affixed to a passport is the subject of a new Smithsonian online exhibit

Femme au beret orange et au col de fourrure (Marie Thérèse), by Pablo Picasso, 1937

New Exhibition Featuring Picasso, O’Keeffe, Hopper and Many Others Brings Modernism Into Focus

The artistic risk and adventure of 20th-century modernism is explored at the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Indians with Umbrellas, 1971.

How Native American Artist Fritz Scholder Forever Changed the Art World

An exhibit in Denver looks at why we should all be grateful that Scholder broke his word

Kids test out the new 1,700-square-foot Wegmans Wonderplace at the National Museum of American History.

How the Smithsonian Hopes to Turn Infants, Toddlers and Young Children Into Museumgoers

The National Museum of American History opens its new “Wonderplace,” a space for the youngest members of the family

A pair of six-panel folding screens entitled Waves of Matsushima, Tawaraya Sōtatsu, early 1600s

A Renowned, But Forgotten, 17th-Century Japanese Artist Is Once Again Making Waves

Long neglected, the 17th-century Japanese artist Tawaraya Sōtatsu influenced Western art 400 years later

Kay WalkingStick's five-decade career is honored in a major retrospective, “Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist,” at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian.

A Long Overdue Retrospective for Kay WalkingStick Dispels Native Art Stereotypes

At the American Indian Museum, the new show traces a career that included minimalist works to monumental landscapes

Anonymous Donor looms, at more than ten feet tall. “As you are walking through it you’re just engulfed by the object,” says curator Nicholas Bell.

The Renwick Reopens

Artist Chakaia Booker Gives Tires a Powerful Retread

Booker empowers her monumental sculptures with new life, shaped by the shearing and bending and folding of repurposed rubber

Echelman's sculpture is inspired by data supplied by NASA and NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, measuring the effects of the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Tohoku, Japan in 2011.

The Renwick Reopens

How One Artist Learned to Sculpt the Wind

Artist Janet Echelman studied ancient craft, travel the world and now collaborates with a team of specialists to choreograph the movement of air

Dawe says he loved having to work with the Renwick building’s 19th-century architectural details as a backdrop.

The Renwick Reopens

Artist Gabriel Dawe Made a Rainbow Out of 60 Miles of Thread

The artwork is an optical illusion that delights the senses; as if the artist embroidered the air

Villareal’s piece, titled Volume (Renwick), holds pride of place above the museum’s historic grand stairway. It uses LEDs embedded in 320 mirrored stainless steel rods.

The Renwick Reopens

Leo Villareal’s 23,000 Points of Light Illuminate the Renwick Gallery

With tens of thousands of individual LEDS, a dangling light sculpture majestically redefines the grand staircase at the Renwick

Round Table

Why Does America Prize Creativity and Invention?

Our politics encourage it, there’s a high tolerance of failure, and we idealize the lone inventor

“The making of these trees was so much in that spirit—in terms of dodging the ease of digital and instead doing this all by hand,” says Grade.

The Renwick Reopens

This Artist Recreated a Magnificent 40-Foot-Tall Tree From the Cascade Mountains by Hand

Artist John Grade painstakingly built a 150-year-old giant hemlock out of half a million blocks of reclaimed wood

Shindig by Patrick Dougherty is on view at the newly renovated Renwick Gallery.

The Renwick Reopens

This Tilting, Twirling Artwork, Sculpted Entirely of Sticks, Is Having a Shindig

Stick man Patrick Dougherty’s sculptures evoke a playful urge to crawl inside

Stockholm-Arlanda Airport

Appreciating the Art and Architecture of the World’s Airport Towers

Smithsonian photographer Carolyn Russo traveled the world to capturing these surprisingly elegant structures

Marking the reopening of the Renwick Gallery, Donovan constructed 10 towers by stacking and gluing hundreds of thousands of index cards on top of each other.

The Renwick Reopens

What Do One Million Index Cards, Stacked Atop Each Other, Look Like? Artist Tara Donovan Does It Again

The artist’s looming installation recalls the volcanic fairy chimneys of Turkey’s Cappadocia region

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