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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March 16 - April 27, 1958
Photographs by Alfred Stieglitz
March 15 - May 11, 1958
The Fantastic, the Occult, and the Bizarre in Prints
December 21, 1957 - February 12, 1958
Illuminated Manuscript Pages and North Italian Engravings
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.

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