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 Renaissance in the North: New Prints and Perspectives
Closed November 27, 2022

Discover rare prints by Albrecht Dürer, Hendrick Goltzius, and other influential artists alongside engravings, etchings, and woodcuts by other highly talented but less familiar figures, such as Erhard Schön and Jan Sadeler I.

This is a print of a battle scene in a forest, with men engaged in combat amidst a backdrop of dense trees. The men are a mix of armed and unarmed, some holding long swords, sticks, axes, or pitchforks. Some are lying on the ground. Some of the men are nude apart from small garments around their groins, while other men are wearing full outfits with tunics, jackets, and wide-brimmed hats. The background includes tall trees with heavy branches in front of a sky filled with thin, horizontal lines. In the bottom left and right corners of the paper, below the print, are small rectangles with text in them.
The Woman in White: Joanna Hiffernan and James McNeill Whistler
Closed October 10, 2022

Bringing together for the first time nearly all of Whistler’s depictions of Hiffernan, The Woman in White explores their partnership and the iconic works of art resulting from their life together.

Night Moods
Closed December 31, 2022
American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams
Closed October 2, 2022
Kara Walker's The Katastwóf Karavan
Closed May 19, 2022
Afro-Atlantic Histories
Closed July 17, 2022

Taking an in-depth look at the historical experiences and cultural formations of Black and African people since the 17th century, this exhibition includes works of art like paintings, sculpture, photographs, and time-based media by artists from Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean.

James Van Der Zee’s Photographs: A Portrait of Harlem
Closed May 30, 2022
An elegantly dressed Black man and woman stand facing and looking at us, slightly smiling, in a room in this vertical photograph. The image is monochromatic like a black and white photograph but is printed in warm tones of golden and dark browns. To our left, the man has short-cropped hair and is cleanshaven. He has dark eyes, a rounded nose, and his lips are closed in a slight smile. He wears a three-piece tuxedo and holds a bowler hat and cane in his right hand, on our left. He pulls his suit jacket back to hook his other thumb in his vest pocket. He wears rings on each of his pinky fingers and a chain crosses his vest, tucked into the same pocket as his thumb. The woman stands with her left hand, on our right, on her hip and her other hand resting on the man’s shoulder. She has a delicate nose, dark eyes, and her closed lips turn up slightly at the corners. She has a cheek-length bob haircut and wears dangling earrings and a necklace with a pendant. Her ankle-length, sleeveless dress is beaded with geometric and scrolling patterns. Some of the beads and the ring she wears on the third finger of the hand on her hip catch and reflect the light. An upholstered chair sits to our left and a wood side table with an urn filled with flowers and a telephone stands to our right. The telephone has a conical earpiece hanging from a stand with a flaring mouthpiece. The backdrop behind the people has a painted or wallpapered section to our left and an arch leading to a curtained window to our right. Parts of the photograph are noticeably out of focus, particularly in the background and the flowers. The artist signed the work with white letters against the dark shadows under the seat of the chair, near the lower left corner: “VAN DER ZEE NYC 1924.”
The New Woman Behind the Camera
Closed January 30, 2022

This groundbreaking exhibition explores how women emerged as a driving force in modern photography from the 1920s to the 1950s, bringing their own perspectives to artistic experimentation, studio portraiture, fashion and advertising work, scenes of urban life, ethnography, and photojournalism.

Aquatint: From Its Origins to Goya
Closed February 21, 2022

In the second half of the eighteenth century, the blossoming new printmaking technique—aquatint—vastly expanded possibilities for creating and disseminating images. Most of these selected works from our exceptional collection of early aquatints have never been on public view.

Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings
Closed June 1, 2022

Seen together, this collection offers a unique opportunity to enjoy some of the finest productions of Dutch and Flemish artists of the 17th century.

In the Library: Print Culture and the Arts in Genoa
Closed January 7, 2022
In the Library: Time/Travel through Artists’ Books
Closed September 17, 2021

Time/Travel is a selection of artists’ books, all by women artists, that explores universal themes through an eclectic selection from the past 50 years. This exhibition is open in the East Building, Ground Floor, Study Center on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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