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Must-sees

Let us guide you to the highlights that visitors love most. 

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Hands-On Activities:  Sketchbook Club: William Christenberry, Coleman’s Cafe

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Talks & Conversations:  Storytime: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!

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Talks & Conversations:  Poetry Writing Workshop: Where We At!

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Talks & Conversations:  The Art of Looking: Cara Romero, Life in the West

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Talks & Conversations:  Book Launch—Barnett Newman: Here

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A young boy with pink and tan-colored skin stands next to a seated woman with an ashen white face, and both look out at us in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is created with broad areas of mottled color in rust and coral red, pale pink, lilac purple, ivory white, and shades of tawny brown. The eyes of both people are heavily outlined with large, dark pupils. To our right, the woman’s pale, oval face is surrounded by a muted, mint-green cloth that covers her hair and wraps across her neck. Her eyes are outlined with charcoal gray, and her heavy lids shaded under arched brows with smoky, plum purple. She has a straight nose, and her burgundy-red lips are closed in a straight line. Her long, rose-pink dress is lavender purple below the knee, and is scrubbed with darker pink strokes across her lap. Her sleeves are tan on the upper arms and cream white on the forearm, over two blush-pink forms that represent her hands resting on her thighs. Along the top of her shoulders, her dress is terracotta red. A rectangular, fog-gray form behind her could be a chair or a half-wall, the top edge of which is higher to our right of her head. To our left, the boy has dark brown, short hair over putty pink, protruding ears. The area between his eyelid and arched brow is filled in with chocolate brown, giving his staring eyes a hooded look. His jawline, chin, and lips are outlined with dark brown. His khaki-brown, knee-length coat has pale, rose-pink sleeves and a black collar. An area of pale, ice blue could be a kerchief or high-collared shirt, and he wears fawn-brown pants. One of his slippers is coffee brown and the other, closer to the woman, is slate gray. He holds a loosely painted, pale, turquoise-blue object in one hand at his waist. The pair are situated against a background painted in areas of coral, ruby, crimson, and wine red. Two vertical, concrete-gray strips behind the boy and woman could be columns. The floor along the bottom edge of the painting is pale pink.

Talks & Conversations:  The Dreams of Arshile Gorky

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This horizontal painting shows a group of eight light-skinned musicians and onlookers gathered closely around a rectangular, carpet-covered table. The front edge of the table runs parallel to the bottom edge of the painting, and seems close to us. Shown from about the waist up, the men and women’s vivid lapis-blue, coral-red, buttercup-yellow, lilac-purple, and moss-green garments fall in crisp folds. Bright reflections on the fabric suggest a satin-like material. Two women wear feathers in their hair and one man’s hat is plumed. One man, wearing crimson red and black, sits with his back to us to our left on the near side of the table. He holds the neck of a bass viol, about the size of a cello, with his left hand, and points to pages of an open music book with the bow in his right hand. The other people cluster on the far side of the table. A man to the left plays a violin; a woman at the center plays a guitar-sized bandora, and a woman to our right plays a lute. The musicians, along with a man who leans over the table from between the two women, look down at the music books. A young man behind the woman at the center holds up a glass of pale liquid with his right hand as he touches his left forefinger to his smiling lips. A man and woman stand close together in the background to our right, in the top right corner of the canvas.

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A woman and winged angel, both with pale, peach skin, are situated in a church interior in this tall, narrow painting. To our left, the angel has long, blond, curly hair, smooth skin, and is smiling. The wings are outlined in royal blue, and they blend from blue to green to yellow to crimson. The angel holds one hand, closer to us, up at chest height with the index finger subtly pointing upward. Holding a long scepter in the other hand, the angel angles their body toward the woman to our right. The angel wears a gold jewel and pearl-encrusted crown and a jeweled long, voluminous robe in scarlet-red and shimmering gold brocade. The neck and along the opening down the front are lined with pearls and jewels. The angel looks toward the woman, who wears a royal-blue dress tied with a red belt at the high waist. Her long brown hair is tied back but one tendril falls over her left shoulder, to our right. She kneels facing us with her raised hands facing outward. Her head is tipped a bit to our left, and she looks up and into the distance to our right with lips slightly parted. She kneels behind a book lying open on a low table. A vase of white lilies and a red cushion lies on the floor in front of the table, close to us. The floor is decorated with people and scenes outlined in black and set into square panels, as if inlaid with wood. The church behind and above the people has a row of tall, narrow arches with bull’s-eye glass windows. A walkway lined with columns runs above the arches, and sunlight comes in through arched windows under the flat wood ceiling. A white dove flies toward the woman on gold lines from a window at the upper left of the painting. Latin words painted in gold capital letters are exchanged between the people. The angel says, “AVE GRA PLENA.” The letters of the woman’s response are painted upside down and backward: “ECCE ANCILLA DNI.”
Jan van Eyck, The Annunciation, c. 1434/1436, oil on canvas transferred from panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.39
Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1878-1881, pigmented beeswax, clay, metal armature, rope, paintbrushes, human hair, silk and linen ribbon, cotton faille bodice, cotton and silk tutu, linen slippers, on wooden base, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1999.80.28
Shown from the chest up, a man with short, orange hair and green-tinted, pale skin looks at us, wearing a vivid blue painter's smock in this vertical portrait painting. His smock and the background are painted with long, mostly parallel strokes of cobalt, azure, and lapis blue. His shoulders are angled to our left, and he looks at us from the corners of his blue eyes. He has a long, slightly bumped nose, and his lips are closed within a full, rust-orange beard. He holds a palette and paintbrushes in his left hand, in the lower left corner of the canvas. The background is painted with long brushstrokes that follow the contours of his head and torso to create an aura-like effect.
Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait, 1889, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5
Gordon Parks, Self-Portrait, 1941, gelatin silver print, Purchased as the Gift of Alan and Marsha Paller, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen and Marc Andreessen via the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Raj and Indra Nooyi, Mitchell P. Rales, David M. Rubenstein, and Darren Walker in honor of Sharon Percy Rockefeller , 2021.61.1
Shown from the knees up, a man with light skin shaded with sage green sits in a carrot-orange, high-backed chair, looking at us in this stylized, vertical portrait. Brown hair sweeps across his forehead and his interlaced fingers rest on his head so his elbows splay to the sides. The green shading is especially noticeable in the contours of his face and the underside of his thin arms. One black eyebrow is slightly arched over pale silver eyes. His pink lips are closed in a straight line and there is the suggestion of a cleft in his chin. He wears a white tee shirt and khaki pants, and his knees are relaxed open. His chest is slightly sunken in as he leans into the chair. The chair and his body and features are outlined in black. Brushstrokes are noticeable throughout, and the background is especially loosely painted. Areas of watery lavender purple, pale blue, and tan suggest the structure of a room. Light falls onto the man from our left.
Alice Neel, Hartley, 1966, oil on canvas, Gift of Arthur M. Bullowa, in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art, 1991.143.2
Made with mostly square or rectangular pieces of patterned paper in shades of asparagus and moss green, sky blue, tan, and ash brown, a man with brown skin sits in the center of this horizontal composition with a second person over his shoulder, in the upper left corner of this collage. The man’s facial features are a composite of cut-outs, mostly in shades of brown and gray, as if from black-and white photographs, and he smokes a cigarette. He sits with his body angled slightly to our right and he looks off in that direction, elbows resting on thighs and wrists crossed. His button-down shirt and pants, similarly collaged, are mottled with sky blue and white. One foot, on our right, is created with a cartoonish, shoe-shaped, black silhouette. The paper used for the other foot seems to have been scraped and scratched, creating the impression that that foot is bare. A tub, made of the same blue and white paper of the man’s suit, sits on the ground to our left, in the lower corner. The man sits in front of an expanse made up of green and brown pieces of paper patterned with wood grain, which could be a cabin. In a window in the upper left, a woman’s face, her features similarly collaged, looks out at us. One dark hand, large in relation to the people, rests on the sill with the fingers extended down the side of the house. The right third of the composition is filled collaged scraps of paper patterned to resemble leafy trees. Closer inspection reveals the form of a woman, smaller in scale than the other two, standing in that zone, facing our left in profile near a gray picket fence. She has a brown face, her hair wrapped in a patterned covering, and she holds a watermelon-sized, yellow fruit with brown stripes. Several blue birds and a red-winged blackbird fly and stand nearby. Above the woman and near the top of the composition, a train puffs along the top of what we read as the tops of trees. The artist signed the work in black letters in the upper right corner: “romare bearden.”
Romare Bearden, Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967, collage of various papers with charcoal, graphite and paint on paper mounted to canvas, Paul Mellon Fund, 2001.72.1
The spiraling whorls of a nearly round, pearl-white shell fills this square painting. The inner edges of the shell’s whorls are shaded with pale spring green, especially to our right, and the innermost spiral is pale pink. The outer lip, that is, the open end of the shell, faces down to our right. The shell sits against a stone-gray background and casts a shadow to our left.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Shell No. I, 1928, oil on canvas, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, Bequest of Georgia O'Keeffe, © Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1987.58.7
Shown from about the knees up, a pale, smooth-skinned woman in a fur-lined yellow jacket looks out at us as she sits writing at a table in this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces the table to our left. She turns her head to gaze at us from the corners of her dark gray eyes under faint brows. She has a wide nose, and her pale lips are closed. Her light brown hair is pulled back and held in place with white bows, and gleaming teardrop-shaped pearl earrings dangle from her ears. Her lemon-yellow jacket is trimmed with ermine fur, which is white with black speckles, at the cuffs and down the front opening. A full, elephant-gray skirt falls to the floor beneath the jacket. Both hands rest on the table, and she holds a quill in her right hand, farther from us, on a piece of paper. She leans forward in her wooden chair. The back panel of the chair is covered in black fabric and lined with brass studs. Two gilded finials, carved into lions’ heads, face the woman’s back with mouths open. The table is covered with a celestial-blue cloth crumpled near the left edge of the canvas. On the table are a strand of pearls, a pale yellow ribbon, and a black box with three brown panels studded with pearls around silver keyholes. Two pewter gray vessels are visible just beyond it, in front of a second chair, which faces us. On the putty-gray wall behind the woman, a framed painting hangs in the upper left quadrant of the composition. The painting-within-the painting is done in muted tones of brown and shows a cello and other unidentifiable objects.
Johannes Vermeer, A Lady Writing, c. 1665, oil on canvas, Gift of Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer, Jr., in memory of their father, Horace Havemeyer, 1962.10.1
This nearly square, abstract painting is filled with circles within circles, like nested rings, each of a single bright color against the ivory white of the canvas. Each ring is made up of a series of short, rectangular dashes, and some bands are narrower while others are a bit wider. The majority of the rings are crimson and brick red, and they are interspersed with bands of lapis blue, army green, and pale pink. One of two pumpkin-orange bands is the smallest, innermost ring at the center. There is one aqua-blue colored ring just inside a pale, shell-white ring, which is the first to get cropped by the edges of the canvas. A few red, green, and blue rings beyond the white band are only seen at the corners of the canvas.
Alma Thomas, Pansies in Washington, 1969, acrylic on canvas, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Vincent Melzac), 2015.19.144
This is an ornate goblet crafted from a nautilus shell mounted on a decorative stand. The shell has an off-white color with delicate orange patterns and is carved with floral designs. The goblet is set into a golden-colored metal holder with intricate designs, such as a human figure with a fish tail and what look like wings. The gold base features elaborate floral patterns.
Dutch 17th Century, Swedish 17th Century, Nautilus Cup, c. 1650 (etching), c. 1670 (mount), nautilus shell (nacreous layer with etched low relief), silver, and gilded silver, Patrons' Permanent Fund, 2022.124.1

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Four artworks, one artist to discover. Test your knowledge with a new puzzle every day. 

From low on a hillside, we look up at a light-skinned woman and boy standing in tall grass against a sunny blue sky in this vertical painting. The woman stands at the center of the composition, and the moss-green parasol she holds over her head almost brushes the top edge of the canvas. Her body faces our left but she turns her head to look at us. Her long dress is painted largely with strokes of pale blue and gray with a few touches of yellow. Her voluminous skirts swirl around her legs to our left. She holds the parasol with both hands, and her brown hair is covered with a hat. Long strokes of white paint across her face suggest a veil fluttering in the breeze. The tall grass she stands in is dotted with buttercup yellow and plum purple, and she casts a long diagonal shadow along the grass toward us. The young boy seems to stand on the other side of the hill, since the grass and flowers comes up to his waist. He wears a white jacket and pale yellow straw hat. His arms are by his sides, and he seems to look off into the distance to our left. A sunny blue sky behind the people is dotted with bright blue clouds. The painting is created with loose brushstrokes throughout, and they are especially choppy in the clouds. The artist signed and dated the painting in royal-blue letters at the lower right: “Claude Monet 75.”

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Dozens of people line up around a shed-like structure and around stone ruins to kneel before a woman and baby at the lower center of this circular painting. All the people have pale skin. The crowd gathers along a pathway that winds around a rocky mountain at the top middle of the composition. Most of the people are on foot but a few ride horses or camels. The line of people curves around and through an arched opening in a stone ruin to our left. Sitting at the center of the painting, behind the woman and baby, Mary and Jesus, the structure is open at the front and has a triangular pitched roof. Some of the people, including the three closest to Mary and Jesus, wear elegant, gold-trimmed clothing. Others wear simple tunics, and several people standing along the ruins in the middle distance wear only white loincloths. Ages of the people range from young and cleanshaven to older and bearded. Their costumes are mostly pale yellow, coral orange, crimson red, shell pink, or sky blue. Some people raise their heads and hands while others hold hands to their chests and close their eyes. Mary wears a pale blue robe over a blush-pink dress. Jesus is nude and an older man standing nearby wears an apricot-colored robe over a blue tunic. The older man, Mary, and Jesus have gold halos. A peacock and two other birds stand on the roof of the manger, which shelters an ox, ass, and horses.

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Stories: West to East

Discover how American artists are inspired by the places they call home.

Video:  What Do Kids REALLY Think About Art?

Sharp, hilarious, brutally honest kids react to some of our most iconic works.

We look out onto a sweeping, panoramic view with trees, their leaves fiery orange and red, framing a view of a distant body of water under a sun-streaked sky in this long, horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about halfway up the composition, and is lined with hazy mountains and clouds in the deep distance. Close examination slowly reveals minuscule birds tucked into the crimson-red, golden yellow, and deep, sage-green leaves of the trees to either side of the painting. Closest to us, vine-covered, fallen tree trunks and mossy gray boulders line the bottom edge of the canvas. Beyond a trickling waterfall and small pool near the lower left corner, and tiny within the scale of the landscape, a group of three men and their dogs sit and recline around a blanket and a picnic basket, their rifles leaning against a tree nearby. The land sweeps down to a grassy meadow crossed by a meandering stream that winds into the distance, at the center of the painting. Touches of white and gray represent a flock of grazing sheep in the meadow. A low wooden bridge spans the stream to our right, and a few cows drink from the riverbank. Smoke rises from chimneys in a town lining the riverbank and shoreline beyond, and tiny white sails and steamboats dot the waterway. Light pours onto the scene with rays like a starburst from behind a lavender-gray cloud covering the sun, low in the sky. The artist signed the painting as if he had inscribed the flat top of a rock at the lower center of the landscape with his name, the title of the painting, and date: “Autumn – on the Hudson River, J.F Cropsey, London 1860.”

Article:  Celebrate Fall Foliage with Autumn Art at the National Gallery

Explore our bounty of fall images.

A group of three men, two children, and one woman gather in an empty, dusky rose-pink landscape under a blue, cloudy sky in this nearly square painting. Most of the people have muted, peachy skin, and the woman and the youngest boy have cream-white skin. The woman sits on the ground to our right, apart from the rest of the men and children. She wears a coral-red skirt, a beige shawl, and straw hat, and she looks into the distance to our right. The others stand in a loose semi-circle on the left half of the composition. A man wearing a multicolored, diamond-patterned costume stands with his back to us to the left. He looks to our right in profile and holds the hand of a little girl who also stands with her back to us. She wears a pink dress and white stockings, and her right hand rests on the tall handle of a white basket. A portly man wearing a scarlet-red jester’s costume and pointed hat stands opposite this pair, facing us to our right. Next to him to our right a young man wears a tan-colored leotard with a black bottom. He holds a barrel over his right shoulder and looks over to our right. The sixth person is the youngest boy, who wears a baggy blue and red outfit, and he looks toward the woman. The eyes of all the figures are deeply shadowed.

Interactive Article:  Isolation in Pablo Picasso’s "Family of Saltimbanques"

The painting shows us the ambiguity and loneliness of life on the outskirts of society. 

Article:  In Plain Sight: What to Do When You Don’t “Get” Modern Art

Modern art can be intimidating. Here’s how to trust yourself and your own reaction to what you see.

Video:  D.I.Y. Art: Fabric Stamps Inspired by Henri Matisse

Watch and learn how to make fashion stamps on fabric inspired by Henri Matisse’s 1953 work Large Decoration with Masks.

Interactive Article:  The Marvelous Details of Joris Hoefnagel’s Animal and Insect Studies

Scroll to discover tiny brushstrokes, hidden meanings, and the immense impact on our understanding of the natural world.