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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The Art of Power
Closed November 29, 2009
A stepped, ornately decorated structure made up of forty-four individual woodcuts and etchings printed with black ink on ivory-white paper fills this vertical composition. The structure has a tall central tower flanked by two shorter towers on each side. All three have an arched opening at the bottom. The outer towers are then flanked by three columns. Almost every inch of the structure is densely covered with architectural ornaments, coats of arms, Gothic text, and panels showing scenes with people in interiors or huge crowds in landscapes. Some scenes show soldiers engaged in battle, groups of kings and clergy, or individual men. Architectural ornament includes mythical creatures, gargoyles, saints, kings, and cherubs. The arched openings are tall and narrow, and have checkered floors. Words in elaborate Latin script appear inside the top of each of the three arches. Two ringed-tailed creatures resembling monkeys prowl outside the central arch. Two shallow steps lead down from the structure to five panels that line the base of the composition. Those five panels are filled with Gothic text. The date, "1515," appears at the base of the outermost column to each side.
Exhibition: Judith Leyster, 1609-1660
Closed November 29, 2009
Shown from about the waist up, a woman with smooth, pale skin sits in a chair facing our right in front of a canvas on an easel in this vertical portrait. She leans onto her right elbow, which rests on the seat back. She turns her face to look at us, lips slightly parted. Her dress has a black bodice and a deep rose-pink skirt and sleeves. She wears a translucent white cap over her hair, which has been tightly pulled back. A stiff, white, plate-like ruff encircles her neck and reaches to her shoulders. She holds a paintbrush in her right hand and clutches about twenty brushes, a wooden paint palette, and a rag in her left hand, at the bottom right of the canvas. The painting behind her shows a man wearing robin's egg-blue and playing a violin.
The Beffi Triptych
Closed January 10, 2010
Stanley William Hayter
Closed August 23, 2009
Édouard Manet's "Ragpicker"
Closed September 22, 2009
Against a hilly landscape and on a patch of dirt, five people wearing tattered clothing gather around a bearded man who holds a violin in his lap in this horizontal painting. Most of them have pale skin. Starting from the left is a barefoot young woman holding a blond baby to her chest. She faces our right, and her chestnut-brown hair hides her profile. She wears a black shirt over a calf-length skirt streaked with slate and aquamarine blue. To the right two young boys face us. The boy on the left of that pair wears a loose white shirt tucked into tan-colored pants and an upturned wide-brimmed hat. The boy next to him has short brown hair and is dressed in a black and brown vest and pants over a bone-white shirt. His right arm, to our left, is slung across the shoulders of the blond boy and he looks off to our right with dark, unfocused eyes. The man who holds the violin is to our right of center. He sits on a stone with his body facing our left, but he turns to look at us with dark eyes under heavy brows. He has tan skin, dark gray, curly hair, and a trimmed silvery gray beard. A wrinkle under one eye suggests he may smile slightly at us. He wears a loose brown cloak with a ragged bottom hem, teal-blue stockings, and black shoes. He holds a violin on his lap like a guitar. One hand fingers a chord on the neck of the violin, which comes toward us, and the other hand holds the bow and plucks a string. A sand-colored bag with a strap lies at his feet. Two men stand to our right of the musician. One wears a tall black top hat, a brown cloak, gray pants, and black shoes. His face is loosely and indistinctly painted but he has a beard. Finally, the sixth person is a man who stands along the right side of the painting and is cut off by that edge. He wears a turban, a black polka-dotted scarf, and a long black cloak or coat. One hand clutches the scarf and the other rests on a wooden cane by his side. His chin and long, light-colored beard tuck back against the scarf, and he looks off to our left with dark eyes. There are loosely painted olive and forest-green leaves in the upper left corner. The landscape beyond is painted with indistinct areas of muted green, blue, and brown. Bits of azure-blue sky peek through puffy white and gray clouds overhead. The artist signed and dated the lower right, “ed. Manet 1862.”
Luis Meléndez
Closed August 23, 2009
Jaromír Funke and the Amateur Avant-Garde
Closed August 9, 2009
Gauguin Drawings from the Armand Hammer Collection
Closed September 1, 2009
Caught in the Act
Closed May 16, 2009
Heaven on Earth
Closed August 16, 2009
Designing the Lincoln Memorial
Closed February 12, 2010
Pride of Place
Closed May 3, 2009
Painted in tones of beige, cream white, and pecan brown with hints of shell pink and faint blue, a few sailboats float in a calm body of water with a harbor and a town deep in the distance along the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up this painting. Rippling gently across the foreground, the water reflects the pale blue sky and blush pink of clouds above. To our left, two masted ships with sails furled have pulled up alongside each other. A smaller boat sails to our right and a few more are spaced sparsely along the waterway leading to the town. Painted as a dense forest of spiky masts, the harbor in the far distance is full of boats along a town that stretches nearly the width of the panel. Tiny in scale, there are a few windmills and slate-gray towers for churches, town halls, and other buildings.

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