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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Rachel Whiteread
Closed January 13, 2019

This exhibition brings together some 100 objects from the course of the artist’s 30 year career, including drawings, photographs, architecture-scaled sculptures, archival materials, documentary materials on public projects, and several new works on view for the first time.

Set in a gallery against a row of windows, a free-standing, white plaster cube, nearly reaching the ceiling, angles back and away from us slightly to our right. The cube is made of blocks that fit together so the seams are visible. The side to our left is smooth. A short, tongue-like projection at the bottom center of the face to our right is surrounded by an inverted, squared off U arching over it. Though not obvious in this photograph, the artist created this work by filling an empty room with plaster. The tongue-like shape is the inside of a fireplace, and is lightly blackened where it lined the interior. The inset paneling in the cube would have been the room's mantlepiece, and inset bands along the floor and top of the cube would have been the baseboards and crown molding. The cube sits on a polished stone floor, and the ceiling of the room in which it sits is made of hollow triangular coffers. Opposite us, trees and a building are seen through the wall of windows behind the cube.
Dawoud Bey: The Birmingham Project
Closed April 22, 2019

Dawoud Bey's series, "The Birmingham Project," is a deeply felt and conceptually rich monument to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963.

Corot: Women
Closed December 31, 2018

The forty-five paintings on display, created between the mid-1830s and the early 1870s, are largely divided into three major subjects: costumed single figures, nudes, and allegorical studio scenes.

Spaces: Works from the Collection, 1966–1976
Closed February 18, 2019

This installation features five significant minimal and post-minimal sculptures inspired by presentations of single-room artworks at the Dwan Gallery and the exhibition Spaces at the Museum of Modern Art.

Long prisms hang in rows within a nickel-gray room in this installation. The prisms come toward us in this view. A row of long prisms hang closely together to our right, and shorter prisms are hung in groups farther away from us. They cast long silvery-gray and black shadows on the ground, and hints of rainbows stripe the walls.
Sense of Humor
Closed February 3, 2019

The exhibition includes major works by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Jacques Callot, William Hogarth, James Gillray, Francisco de Goya, and Honoré Daumier, as well as later examples by Alexander Calder, Red Grooms, Saul Steinberg, Art Spiegelman, and the Guerrilla Girls.

This caricature shows a pink-skinned man with long, spindly arms, widely straddled legs, and a bulbous, potbellied torso blowing scraps of paper with puffed cheeks in this vertical, colored etching. He stands with his body facing us, hands planted near his hips, but he turns his narrow head to our right in profile as he blows out the slips of paper. Tall ass’s ears flank a red crown plastered with more scraps of paper. The papers on the crown and being blown out of the man’s pursed lips all read “one.” The man’s long, pointed nose and rotund cheeks are bright red, and lank, light brown hair brushes his neck. Eyebrows are arched over heavy-lidded eyes. His rounded belly is made up of yellow disks, possibly coins, that also reach up his long, thin neck. A cursive letter “L,” the symbol for a British pound, is written on the belly. A padlock hangs from a chain around his neck, bearing the words, “Power of securing Public Credit.” His long fingers hook around either side of his torso. A yellow skeleton key with a tag reading, “Key of Public Property” hangs from his left pinky finger, to our right. His arms are covered in blue sleeves with yellow buttons at the cuffs, and a scarlet-red cloak with yellow epaulets hangs over his arms and swirls around his shins. His feet are planted wide and he wears parchment-colored, knee-length britches, light blue stockings, and black shoes with buckles. He straddles a miniature view into a building labeled the “BANK OF ENGLAND,” where coins and slips of paper rain down from the ceiling. Tiny in scale, about two dozen men wearing dark hats and coats in brown, blue, red, or green look up and gesture toward the ceiling. At the center of the room is a domed structure about the height of the men. To our left of the main caricatured man and near his leg, five heads emerge from a bank of reedy grass. Each head has a red cap, and a white speech bubble angling from each mouth reads, “Midas has Ears.” Beyond the grass and heads, turquoise water leads back to a shoreline with a sign reading “BREST” and a flag striped horizontally with red, white, and blue. To our right, near the man’s waist, three miniature, light-skinned men with round faces and paunchy bellies float around a banner. Cloaks affixed around their necks flutter around their otherwise nude bodies, and they raise their hats high above their heads with one hand. The banner reads, “Prosperous state of British finances and the new plan for diminishing the national debt with hints on the increase of commerce.” The sky above these vignettes has a band of blue clouds. The paper being blown from the man’s mouth fills the upper right corner of the paper but in the upper left, touches of light blue beneath peach-colored dots suggest countless angels or bodies shooting into the sky. Under the border around the printed image, across the bottom, and inscription reads, “MIDAS, Transmuting all into GOLD PAPER,” and the word “GOLD” has been crossed out with overlapping, diagonal lines. The inscription continues below: “History of Midas, The great Midas having dedicated himself to Bacchus, obtained from that Deity, the power of changing all he Touched — Apollo fixed Asses Ears upon his head, for his Ignorance & although he tried to hide his disgrace with a Regal Cap, yet the very Sedges which grew from the Mud of the Pactolus, whispered out his Infamy, whenever they were agitated by the Wind from the opposite Shore __ Vide Ovids Metamorpho,” the last word fading out. In smaller letters, the work is inscribed “Js. Gy. inv & ft” under the lower left corner of the image, and “Pub. March 9th 1797 by H. Humphrey New Bond Street” under the lower right corner.
Water, Wind, and Waves: Marine Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age
Closed November 25, 2018

This exhibition explores the deep, multifaceted relationship the Dutch had with the water, including their gratitude for the sea’s bounty and their fear of its sometimes destructive power.

Beyond several craggy boulders that loom in the lower left corner of this horizontal painting, three sailing ships pitch wildly in crashing waves beneath towering clouds. At the center, a large ship tips sharply to our right with billowing ivory sails and two red, white, and blue striped flags whipping in the wind. White spray kicks up against the side of the boat and in the waves surrounding it. The sails of the second ship, to our right, are furled except for one that crashes down onto the deck. Tiny people scurry around inside the ship, which tilts steeply up on a high wave. The third ship floats beyond this, its sails also tied up. The top of a tall wooden mast along with a broken wooden pole poke up from emerald-green waves in the lower right corner, near a barrel and two bundles wrapped in cloth and tied with rope that bob nearby. One of the brown, jagged rocks to our left nearly spans the height of the painting while others jut from the water like crooked teeth. A bank of billowing, slate-gray clouds at the center of the sky separates a fog-gray sky and puffy clouds to our right from a patch of golden sunlight to our left, in the upper corner of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the work as if written on a rock at the bottom center of the canvas, “LBackh 1667.”
Alfred Stieglitz and John Marin
Closed December 10, 2018

A journalist writing in 1926 described the relationship between the artist John Marin and the photographer and gallery director Alfred Stieglitz as one of “mutual admiration which, expressed by the silent loyalty on the part of the non-communicative Marin, is heralded widely by Mr. Stieglitz, who seems never to feel happier than when praising the genius of Marin.” These collaborators, who worked, as Stieglitz wrote, to prove that “water- color is a major medium in the hands of one like Marin,” met in 1909 and remained steadfast friends until Stieglitz’s death in 1946. Stieglitz first exhibited Marin’s work at his New York gallery 291 in 1910 and showed it almost every year thereafter. He him frequent financial support. The two shared subjects as well — especially New York City and the natural world — and frequently drew inspiration from one another’s work.

This image shows a landscape with hills or mountains in silhouette against a cloudy sky. The land is dark with various tones of black and deep gray. The sky above the horizon is filled with textured clouds in light and dark gray tones, with a bright circle indicating the sun or moon shining through. The image is in black and white, emphasizing contrast and texture.
Monet’s The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil
Closed July 29, 2018
A small child stands facing us on a sun-dappled path that runs up the center of a garden dominated by towering yellow and burnt-orange sunflowers in this loosely painted, vertical scene. The light comes from our right so long, sea-green and plum-purple shadows cross the peach-colored path. The path is wide at the bottom center of the canvas and narrows as it reaches the steps of a house, beyond the garden. Close to us, four blue and white porcelain urns line the path, separating it from the grassy banks to either side. The urns are filled with tall stems with coral-pink and cardinal-red flowers. The child stands about halfway back along the path, where the garden transitions from grass to the banks of tall sunflowers. A few strokes in front of the child could be a small dog. Behind the child, a woman and another child stand on the steps. The woman wears a cornflower-blue and white dress, while both children have bare legs and wear white clothes and yellow hats. All three have indistinct facial features and peach-colored skin. The house spans with width of the composition. It has an amethyst-purple roofline with two chimneys, and the petal-pink walls have mango-yellow highlights. Windows are covered with blue latticework. Above the house, fluffy white clouds float against a vibrant blue sky. The artist signed and dated the painting at the lower right in dark blue, “Claude Monet 80.”
In the Library: The Richter Archive at 75
Closed August 24, 2018
Four people with pale skin are gathered to our right in a landscape, their heads bowed down toward an infant who lies on a white cloth on the ground in this horizontal painting. The nude baby has a rounded belly, chubby limbs, and short blond hair. To our right and near the edge of the panel, a woman kneels with her hands in prayer, looking toward the baby so she faces our left in profile. She wears a lapis-blue robe over a rose-pink dress, and a white cloth covers her head and shoulders. Behind her and to our left, a man with a white beard, wearing a golden yellow robe, sits or kneels next to a rock at the mouth of a cave cut into a rocky outcropping that extends off the top of the composition. To the left of the baby and at the center of the foreground, a pair of men wear tattered clothing and hold shepherd’s staffs. The man closer to us kneels with his hands pressed together in prayer as the man behind him bends his knee as if to kneel. The landscape recedes deep into the distance on the left half of the painting with a winding river, houses and other buildings, grassy hills, and mountains beneath a blue sky. A small winged angel wearing white looks down on the scene from the upper left corner.
Sharing Images: Renaissance Prints Into Maiolica and Bronze
Closed August 5, 2018

This exhibition brings together some 90 objects to highlight the impact of Renaissance prints on maiolica and bronze plaquettes, the two media most dramatically influenced by the new technology of image replication.

Cézanne Portraits
Closed July 8, 2018

Bringing together some 60 examples drawn from collections around the world, Cézanne Portraits is the first exhibition devoted to the famed post-impressionist’s portraits from across his career.

Shown from the thighs up, a boy wearing a crimson-red waistcoat stands against swags of fabric painted with visible strokes in white, sky blue, harvest yellow, and sage green in this loosely painted, vertical portrait. Painted with choppy brushstrokes, the boy has pale, ivory-white skin, blushing pink cheeks, pursed lips, faint eyebrows, and topaz-blue eyes that gaze down to our right. His shoulder-length, dark brown hair is tucked behind one ear under a brown wide-brimmed hat. His red waistcoat is worn over a long-sleeved, slate-blue shirt. The collar of his skirt is slightly flipped up on his right side, to our left, and a swipe of cobalt blue suggests a tie or scarf between the lapels. A band of sapphire blue could be a belt above olive-green trousers, and dashes of navy blue create shadows. His right hand, to our left, is planted on that hip. The other arm hangs straight and loose by his side, those fingertips almost brushing the bottom edge of the canvas. The boy’s body is outlined in dark blue. The drapery behind him falls in folds that sweep gently to our right. The background is painted with patches and swipes of cool blues and greens, and pale golden yellow. One swag of the drapery, over the shoulder to our left, is painted with a loose pattern suggesting leaves. One back post and a sliver of the curving back of a wooden chair peeks into the composition in the lower left corner.
Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings
Closed May 28, 2018

This exhibit at the National Gallery of Art featured some 110 photographs by Sally Mann and explored how her relationship with the South has shaped her work.

A tree trunk spanning the height of this horizontal photograph is scarred across its middle with a long, dark gash near its roots. The image is monochromatic like a black and white photograph but the white has a warm, almost golden ivory glow. The details of the trunk are crisp, in focus, while the wire fence, field, and trees in the background are blurry. The tree’s branches dip into the scene from the top edge of the photograph, and they are also out of focus. The top corners of the view are rounded, and filled in with black.

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