Past Exhibitions

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

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December 15, 1957 - January 12, 1958
Masterpieces of Korean Art
October 19 - December 1, 1957
The Art of William Blake
A long, rectangular dining table is surrounded by thirteen people in this horizontal painting. The skin of all the people, some of their clothing, and the tabletop are painted golden yellow. Touches of aquamarine blue, salmon pink, and rust red appear in some clothing, and the scene is set against a nearly black background. Across from us at the center of the table, a radiating, gold starburst surrounds the head and shoulders of a man, Jesus, with shoulder-length blond hair and beard. He looks at or toward us with dark eyes as he holds his hands up, palms facing out, at his chest. He wears a champagne-white robe and reclines with his legs extended to our left as he rests his opposite elbow on what could be a cushion or rolled-up blanket. To our right, a second person mirrors Jesus’s reclining position but with wrists crossed over the chest and turning to look toward Jesus. That person wears a long teal-blue garment and has smooth cheeks and long blond hair. Another bearded man to our left, near the back corner of the table, leans away from Jesus with hands held up as if in prayer. Three people lounge or sit on each of the short sides of the table to our left and right, and four recline on the side closest to us. Some have beards and others are cleanshaven, and some have short hair while others have long locks. Most of them look toward Jesus while two bend low to the table in prayer. One man, in the lower right, wears brick red and turns his back on the table as he counts or touches coins in a sack. The long table is set with goblets and plates of food. The artist signed the work with his initials in the lower left corner: “WB inv.”
August 9 - September 15, 1957
American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art
July 24 - September 16, 1957
American Primitive Paintings
Three small children with pale pink skin sit and stand among a group of animals to our right as a group of eight indigenous people with light brown skin gather with eight white-skinned men near a riverbank in the distance to our left in this horizontal painting. The children and animals take up the right two-thirds of the composition. They gather on a flat-topped spit of land, which is covered in grass. All three children have blond hair and rounded features. Two sit on the ground at the bottom center of the painting. The largest animal is a caramel-brown bull, which stands next to a pale golden lion. The other animals are smaller in scale, and include a tiger, wolf, sheep, goats, cows, bears, and a jaguar, all sitting or standing at rest around the bull and lion. At the top center of the group of animals, one child stands over the lion’s back and has one arm around the tiger’s shoulders, and another child at the lower center touches the jaguar’s nose. A tree with olive-green, rust-red, and harvest-yellow leaves grows up the right edge of the canvas, in front of a tall, forest-green bush. On another spit of flat-topped, elevated grassy land to our left, six of the indigenous people stand in a row, wearing feathered headdresses. Two more kneel in front, creating a U-shape. The two in front wear loin cloths, and all eight wear gold earrings and necklaces. They face a gathering of eight men wearing tricorn hats, long coats, waistcoats, knee-length britches, and stockings in shades of gray, blue, white, brown, and orange. One of these men hold up a roll of cloth lifted out of a chest. Trees with spindly trunks and golden yellow canopies reach into the top corner of the painting along the left edge. The river extends into the distance beyond this group, with pale, sage-green hills carpeted in trees. Puffy white clouds float across a sky that deepens from pale shell pink along the horizon to light blue along the top. The features of the animals and children are painted simply and appear rather flat, giving them an almost cartoonish look.
May 15 - July 14, 1957
One Hundred Years of Architecture in America
March 16 - April 28, 1957
American Primitive Paintings
Twelve men, women, children, and babies are arranged on or around a couch in this horizontal portrait painting. The features and clothing are simply painted, so some of the faces are a bit generic. They all have pale skin with rosy cheeks, and all but one of them have blue eyes. The slate-blue couch is centered against a wall mottled with copper brown, golden yellow, and sage green. Three adults sit on the couch. To our left, a man wearing a black suit and stockings leans against the arm of the couch so his body faces our right in profile, his legs crossed. He turns to look at us with a slight smile on his lips, his eyebrows raised. His dark hair is smoothed back along the top of his head and is bushy over each ear. A white neckerchief wraps across his high collar and ruffles cascade down the front. He holds a book in his lap. Two women sit next to him, to our right. Both have dark hair and wear broad neckerchiefs over tightly fitting bodices, and white aprons over long, full skirts. The woman to our left turns her face slightly to our left but looks at us from the corners of her eyes. She wears a white bonnet, and her bodice is plum purple. The other woman’s head is uncovered and her forehead lined with bangs. Both of these women hold babies wearing white caps, and the babies smile. Just behind the couch, to our right of the second woman, a young man with a faint, dark beard, black hair, and brown eyes stands with his body facing our left in profile. He turns to look at us as he tucks one hand between the buttons of his nickel-gray, high-collared jacket. Two boys wearing blue suits stand to our left in front of the couch, near the seated man. The smaller boy, to our left, holds an archery bow, wears a dark cap, and looks at us, smiling. The older boy standing next to him has blond hair and points down at the younger child with one hand, the other on his hip. Two young women and a girl stand to our right, also in front of the couch. They all wear white dresses with long sleeves and skirts, their narrow waists tied with rose-pink sashes. Two older girls have black hair and hold hands. The youngest girl, near the right edge of the painting, has blond hair and also looks at us. The carpet beneath the group has vertical stripes leading back to the wall. Narrow bands of navy blue are dotted with pink to suggest a floral pattern, between wider, light blue stripes.
January 19 - February 24, 1957
A Retrospective Exhibition of the Work of George Bellows
From under an elevated train track, we look at a cluster of people hammering and working on the far side of a wooden fence, all against a silvery-blue building that fills most of the background in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted mostly in tones of hazy and saturated blues, so many of the details are indistinct. About a quarter of the way in from the right edge of the composition, a thin iron column holds up the train platform. The column nearly spans the height of the painting, and the track it supports runs across the top edge of the canvas. At the foot of the column, along the bottom edge, are two parallel tracks embedded in an area otherwise painted with short, diagonal strokes in topaz blue, olive green, and straw yellow. Just beyond the tracks, the split-rail wooden fence runs across most of the painting, though there is an opening at the left edge of the canvas. A man sits with his back to us on the railing to our right of center. He wears a dark cap, a lapis-blue shirt, and navy-blue pants. Several men work on or near a mound-shaped form, perhaps a piece of machinery, just beyond the fence, near the center of the painting. One man holds a hammer high overhead while another reaches down or strikes the mound with his feet planted wide. More people work together to our left, and a man to our right stands near a crane. The people and these areas are painted with broad strokes and touches of cobalt blue, charcoal gray, khaki brown, and a few swipes of shell pink and bright white. A puff of white smoke billows up behind the central group, before the land drops precipitously away. The chasm is painted with shimmering tones of aquamarine and cerulean blue. A sky-blue, rectangular building perches at the far edge. A few windows are outlined in royal blue to our left but the rest of the building is loosely painted with long, vertical strokes so no architectural details can be made out. Behind this structure are more city buildings, suggested with strokes of muted rust red, parchment and bright white, and cobalt blue. The ice-blue sky fills the band between the top of the buildings and the train track running overhead. The artist signed his name near the lower left corner, “BELLOWS.”

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