Past Exhibitions

Learn about past exhibitions going back as far as 1941 when the National Gallery of Art first opened to the public.

Results

December 13, 2018 - July 30, 2019
Diverse Modernisms, 1935–1955
November 14, 2018 - February 18, 2019
No More Play
November 4, 2018 - February 18, 2019
Gordon Parks: The New Tide, 1940-1950
A young Black man stands in profile looking out a tall window to our right in this vertical black and white photograph. The image is cropped so his head, shoulder, and upper arm fill the left half of the composition. He has short hair and wears a shirt or jacket that diffuses the light to suggest that it could be flannel or another soft fabric. With a cigarette dangling loosely from his lips, he stares through the shattered upper pane of the window and he holds his right hand across his chest. The strong light source from the right accentuates his nose, cheeks, hair, and shoulder, and the space behind him is lost in shadow. A blurred, three-story building across the street has a dark façade with white stone lintels above the windows and a mansard roof with curved dormers.
October 14, 2018 - January 20, 2019
The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy
September 17, 2018 - January 11, 2019
In the Library: Rachel Whiteread’s “Ghost”
September 16, 2018 - January 13, 2019
Rachel Whiteread
Set in a gallery against a row of windows, a free-standing, white plaster cube, nearly reaching the ceiling, angles back and away from us slightly to our right. The cube is made of blocks that fit together so the seams are visible. The side to our left is smooth. A short, tongue-like projection at the bottom center of the face to our right is surrounded by an inverted, squared off U arching over it. Though not obvious in this photograph, the artist created this work by filling an empty room with plaster. The tongue-like shape is the inside of a fireplace, and is lightly blackened where it lined the interior. The inset paneling in the cube would have been the room's mantlepiece, and inset bands along the floor and top of the cube would have been the baseboards and crown molding. The cube sits on a polished stone floor, and the ceiling of the room in which it sits is made of hollow triangular coffers. Opposite us, trees and a building are seen through the wall of windows behind the cube.
September 12, 2018 - April 22, 2019
Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project