Past Exhibitions

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

Filter Results

1221 results found

Results

Titian’s Danaë from the Capodimonte Museum, Naples
Closed November 6, 2014

Titian’s Italian Renaissance paintings Danaë, Venus with a Mirror, and Venus and Adonis will be on view to celebrate the commencement of Italy’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. These paintings are examples erotic mythologies genre in Western art popularized by Titian.

Celebrating Van Gogh at the NGA
Closed September 18, 2014
Exhibition: Degas/Cassatt
Closed October 5, 2014

From the moment the Cassatt made her debut in 1879 with the group of artists known as the impressionists, her name has been linked with Degas. The two artists engaged in an intense dialogue, turning to each other for advice and challenging each other to experiment with materials and techniques.

A small brown dog and a pale-skinned little girl wearing a white dress sit in matching celestial-blue armchairs in this horizontal painting. To our right, the girl sits with her legs angled to our left. She slumps back with her legs spread, and her left elbow, on our right, is bent so that hand rests behind her head. Her other elbow is draped over the armrest. Her dark brown hair appears to be pulled back, and tawny brown eyes under faint brows gaze down and to our left. She has a small nose set in a round face and a coral-pink mouth closed in a straight line. Her white dress has touches of gray, soft pink, and powder blue with a wide plaid sash around her waist. The pine-green, black, and sapphire-blue sash is accented with overlapping vertical and horizontal lines of burnt orange, light blue, and mustard yellow. Her socks match her sash and come up to mid-calf, over black shoes with silver buckles. The small dog has scruffy black fur and a russet-brown face. It lies curled in the chair opposite the girl, to our left, with its eyes closed and ears pricked up. The rounded backs of the upholstered chairs curve down to become the low arms. The vivid and light blue fabric of the chairs is scattered with loosely painted strokes of avocado and forest green, peach pink, cherry red, plum purple, and white. Beyond the chairs closest to us is another armchair and an armless loveseat, both covered with the same fabric. They sit at the back of the room, in a corner flooded with silvery light coming through four windows on the right side. The furniture is arranged on a peanut-brown floor. The artist signed in the lower left, “Mary Cassatt.”
Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In
Closed November 30, 2014

This exhibition gathers together — for the first time — a select group of Wyeth’s images of windows. Included in the exhibition are watercolor studies quickly executed to capture a momentary impression as well as tempera paintings created over an extended period of distillation and simplification.

A landscape seen through sheer lace curtains that billow in toward us from an open window nearly fills this horizontal painting. The window is angled slightly downward as it extends off the right side of the composition, so it does not line up with the edges of the rectangular painting. The narrow strip of dove-gray wall to the left of the window casement is cracked near the simple, deep gray molding that surrounds the window. Slivers of light peek through rips in the dark shade that covers upper third of the window. The right curtain panel surges toward us as the left panel flutters lightly off to our side. The inner edges are trimmed with subtle lace birds and flowers. The window looks down onto an expanse of olive-green grass and dark green trees line the far edge of the field. Tire tracks cross the field from near the lower left corner of the painting to our left, and into the distance to meet a sliver of white, perhaps a body of water.
James Nares’ Street
Closed July 6, 2014
In the Library: Deforming and Adorning with Annotations and Marginalia
Closed June 27, 2014
Exhibition: Garry Winogrand
Closed June 8, 2014

Surveying Winogrand’s career from 1950 to his death in 1984, this exhibition is divided into three sections: photographs made in New York from 1950 through 1971; work from the same period made mostly outside New York; and photographs taken mainly in Texas and Los Angeles from 1971 until his death.

From the Library: Grega and Leo A. Daly III Fund for Architectural Books
Closed September 1, 2014
Modern German Prints and Drawings from the Kainen Collection
Closed June 29, 2014
The Monuments Men and the National Gallery of Art
Closed January 4, 2015

This archival display of photographs, documents, and memorabilia describes the seminal role the National Gallery of Art played in the creation of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program and the Roberts Commission and explores the real-life experiences of a few of the monuments men.

The Dying Gaul: An Ancient Roman Masterpiece from the Capitoline Museum, Rome
Closed March 16, 2014

This exhibition marks the first time the Dying Gaul, created in the first or second century AD, has left Italy since 1797, when Napoleonic forces took the sculpture to Paris, where it was displayed at the Louvre until its return to Rome in 1816.

Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections
Closed March 2, 2014

Including mosaics, icons, manuscripts, jewelry, and ceramics, this exhibition explores the coexistence of paganism and Christianity, spiritual life in Byzantium, secular works of art used in the home, the intellectual life of Byzantine scholars, and the cross-influences that occurred.

Loading Results