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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Six Centuries of Prints and Drawings
Closed June 6, 2005
Gerard ter Borch
Closed January 30, 2005
A man bows to a woman as another man looks on from the shadowy background, while a woman sitting at a table plays a lute in this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin. The bowing man enters from an open door to our left. He faces our right in profile and has a bumped nose, a dark mustache, and his brown hair falls loosely over his shoulders. He wears a voluminous, black jacket that has a wide white collar and flat, plate-like, starched white cuffs. He bends forward with one foot stretched in front of him, as he gazes at the woman to our right. His hands are spread wide. His left forefinger and thumb touch to make an O shape, and he holds a wide-brimmed, black hat in his right hand, closer to us. At the center of the composition, the woman wears a dress with a coral-pink bodice and a cream-white satin skirt trimmed with gold down the front and around the hem. She faces our left in profile and looks at the man, her cheeks flushed. Her eyebrows are slightly raised over dark eyes, and she has a straight nose and the hint of a double chin. Her blond hair is pulled back under a lace covering, and curls frame her face. A black ribbon is tied into a bow at the shoulder closer to us. A brown and white dog, about knee-high, stands between the man and woman. To our right, a young woman sits at the far side of a table playing a lute. She wears a sapphire-blue dress and looks down at her instrument. One elbow is propped on the patterned rug that covers the table. A second instrument, perhaps a cello, lies on the table, and a wooden chair with a pine-green upholstered seat has been pulled up to our side of the table. Almost lost in the shadows at the back of the room between the two women, a man with a goatee and wearing a brown jacket and trousers stands with his body angled to our right as he looks over his shoulder at the couple at the door. He stands in front of a fireplace with an opening so large that the mantle is supported by columns as tall as the man.
All the Mighty World
Closed January 2, 2005
Dan Flavin: A Retrospective
Closed January 9, 2005

44 light installations and 96 drawings, sketches, and collage-constructions were in this exhibition illustrating the artist's experimentation with fluorescent light over 35 years. The exhibition included untitled (to you, Heiner, with admiration and affection), a 120-foot-long installation in green fluorescent light, which was visible outside the museum from Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pastels of the Eighteenth Century
Closed September 26, 2004
Palace and Mosque
Closed February 6, 2005
Hudson River School Visions: The Landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford
Closed September 26, 2004

70 landscape paintings were displayed in this survey of the work of American painter Sanford R. Gifford. Inspired by the natural world, Gifford explored the effects of light and atmosphere in his depictions of the Hudson River valley, the Catskill Mountains, and various sites abroad.

A dirt path winds through a field of gold-green grass back to a town built on low hills in this horizontal, densely hazy landscape painting. Several minuscule people walk on the path and at least one person rides a horse. More people are gathered by a domed, white structure in the distance, where the winding path meets a straighter road leading up into the town near the left edge of the canvas. At least six people sit or stand near a conical white tepee to the right, in the lower quadrant. Two horses and about two dozen smaller animals graze nearby. In the town, the cluster of low, flat-topped buildings, the one domed building with two slender minarets, and palm trees are painted in tones of muted mauve pink and peach. The sun is painted as a hot blaze of light low in the washed-out sky over rocky mountains, which stretch across the left half of the composition. The artist signed and dated the painting with angular red letters in the lower right corner, “S.R. Gifford 1874.”
"That the Freedom of the Human Spirit Shall Go On"
Closed September 7, 2004
Drawings of Town and Country from the Armand Hammer Collection
Closed November 14, 2004
American Masters from Bingham to Eakins
Closed February 6, 2005
Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya
Closed July 25, 2004
The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera
Closed July 25, 2004

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