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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Van Gogh's Van Goghs
Closed January 3, 1999

The largest survey of Van Gogh's art presented outside the Netherlands in more than 25 years. 72 paintings were included in the exhibition, 70 paintings of which were on loan from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, during its renovation.

In shades of mint, laurel, and eucalyptus green, the head and shoulders of a chubby baby fill this vertical portrait painting. It is created with long, visible brushstrokes, some of which are thick enough to cast shadows onto the canvas beneath. The baby’s skin is painted with cool, light green, with peach-colored highlights. The baby has large, vivid blue eyes gazing intently down and off to our right, full lips, and chubby cheeks. The white garment comes to the baby’s elbows, and the pudgy fingers touch. The baby wears a gold bracelet and a gold ring with a round, red stone on the right hand, to our left. The garment and white cap on the head are outlined in sky or royal blue. Painted with vertical strokes, the background is a darker shade of laurel green.
Manet, Monet, and the Gare Saint-Lazare
Closed September 20, 1998
Artists and the Avant-Garde Theater in Paris, 1887-1900
Closed September 7, 1998
A Collector's Cabinet
Closed August 9, 1998
French Drawings from the Armand Hammer Collection
Closed November 9, 1998
Mark Rothko
Closed August 16, 1998

The exhibition presented 97 paintings and 17 graphics by the artist, encompassing all phases of his career from the 1920s to his death in 1970, with an emphasis on the so-called surrealist and classic periods. The exhibition was the first comprehensive American retrospective of Rothko's work in 20 years.

Degas at the Races
Closed July 12, 1998
The sculpture depicts a horse in mid-stride. It is made of dark, polished bronze material and mounted on a rectangular wooden base. A thin metal rod supports the horse from underneath. The musculature is well-defined, and the horse is posed with one front leg extended forward and the opposite back leg lifted. The scale suggests it is a small display piece.
Alexander Calder 1898-1976
Closed July 12, 1998
Two disks, one black and one white, and ten smaller red disks hang from eleven red wire branches in this free-floating sculpture, called a mobile. The uppermost branch ends with the white disk jutting out to our right, and the next ends with the black disk, projecting out and slightly up to our left. The red disks cluster in a loose line below, some higher and some drooping down. The mobile is suspended with an unseen filament in a white room in this photograph.
A Design for the National Gallery of Art
Closed October 11, 1998
Building a Collection
Closed April 19, 1998
Lorenzo Lotto
Closed March 1, 1998
Set on a strip of land under a cloud-filled sky and in front of a stormy sea, a nude, light-skinned satyr reclines to our right as a nude, pale-skinned, blond child crouches over some objects on the dirt ground to our left in this vertical landscape painting. The satyr has with a man’s body and shaggy, goat’s legs. He leans over and peers into a golden urn, which has a round bottom and tall, flaring sides about the height of his torso. One hand holds the single handle and the other wraps around the body of the urn. The tips of the satyr’s ears are elongated and pointed, and the corner of his mouth curves up into an exaggerated smile in his brown beard. Red liquid pours from an object, perhaps an overturned urn, near the satyr’s outstretched leg and white liquid pours from another urn between us and the satyr. Next to the satyr, at the center of the painting, a thick, upright tree trunk is broken off abruptly but one shoot grows tall with emerald-green leaves. A translucent, shield-shaped object decorated with an open-mouthed, human face hangs from a pink ribbon around the broken trunk near the branch. A second shield outlined in red with a rearing, white lion against a royal-blue field leans against the foot of the tree to our left. Nearby, the pale, naked child holds a pair of sticks, possibly a compass, and reaches for other objects on the ground near the shield, including a white disk, a pair of small, red-covered books, a square and possibly a plumb line, a flute, pan pipes, and a scroll of paper. The ground and landscape around each person are distinctly different. To our left, the dirt ground under the child is littered with small rocks. Beyond a row of larger boulders, a sweeping field of lemon-lime green sweeps up into a bank of clouds. A small nude person with dark forms, perhaps representing wings, on their shoulders, arms hips, and ankles ascends a path up toward the clouds. To our right, the satyr reclines on green grass in front of a screen of three lush trees. Beyond, across the entire landscape, a choppy sea extends into the far distance beneath the steel-gray clouds above. A masted ship is swallowed by waves behind the satyr, to our right.
M.C. Escher
Closed April 27, 1998

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