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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Heavenly Earth: Images of Saint Francis at La Verna
Closed July 8, 2018
This is a drawing of a forest scene. The artwork depicts a person with a hooded cloak kneeling beneath a canopy of leafy trees, reaching upward. The forest surrounds with trees and foliage detailed, with a path between them. In the distance, a castle can be faintly seen. The atmosphere is contemplative, with light suggesting a significant occurrence. Texture and form of the foliage and garments adds depth to the drawing.
Michel Sittow: Estonian Painter at the Courts of Renaissance Europe
Closed May 13, 2018

The first monographic exhibit devoted to Michel Sittow (c. 1469–1525), considered Estonia's greatest Renaissance artist, includes some 20 paintings, 13 by Sittow, and works by Juan de Flandes, Hans Memling, and Jan Gossaert.

Outliers and American Vanguard Art
Closed May 13, 2018

This art exhibition focuses on three periods over the last century when the intersection of self-taught artists with the mainstream has been at its most fertile.

Painted with small areas of mostly flat color, this horizontal painting shows three brown-skinned people in the room of a home with pale gray walls and wood floors. To our right, a woman wears slate-gray skirt, a white apron and shawl, and a red headscarf with black and white polka dots. She sits in a black wooden chair facing our right in profile, smoking a pipe. A steaming kettle and bright green coffee pot sit on a black wood stove behind and to the right of the woman, with firewood stacked to the right. A clock or timer and an oil lamp sit on a red shelf above the stove and the woman’s head. Beneath her feet is one of three rectangular area rugs with a pattern of green, black, white, and red stripes. A window at the center of the back wall of the room is mostly covered by a dark green curtain. The panes along the bottom are black and lined with white, suggesting snow or frost. A bucket and pewter-colored, shallow bowl sit on a bench on the second striped rug under the window. To our left, a small person standing on the third patterned rug wears short black pants, stockings, and suspenders over a white shirt. That person turns away from us and rests elbows near a lit candle on a table with a red and gray checkered tablecloth. The third person, possibly a young girl, sits on a blanket or a fourth rug patterned with yellow, red, black, and green triangles. That young girl wears a gray dress and black shoes. She cradles a baby doll, and a white dog, perhaps a stuffed animal, sits next to her. A few cracks in the wall near the window expose horizontal bands, perhaps narrow wooden boards under damaged plaster. The artist signed the work with black letters in the lower right corner: “H. PiPPiN.”
In the Tower: Anne Truitt
Closed July 8, 2018

This exhibition, a survey of Truitt’s minimalist sculpture, painting, and works on paper from 1961 to 2002, traces the career of an artist who developed her work quietly and independently in the former carriage and row houses of Washington, DC.

Jackson Pollock’s "Mural"
Closed October 28, 2018

Jackson Pollock’s special installation in the Gallery’s East Building features "Mural" (1943) on loan from the University of Iowa Museum of Art, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), Number 7, 1951, and more.

Machine Age Modernism
Closed May 29, 2018

Mammoth cranes, soaring skyscrapers, bulky industrial tanks — the “stupendous magnitude of the new American environment,” as artist Louis Lozowick declared, held a powerful allure for artists in the United States during the peak of the machine age, between World Wars I and II. The works on view here testify to that allure. They also reveal the variety of methods that artists used in evoking a machine age modernism: angling their sights up or down along towering buildings, streamlining and abstracting forms, exposing the underlying geometry of architecture and machinery, treating dark shadows as solids, and focusing on interlocking parts, such as the gears in Ralph Steiner’s Portrait of Louis Lozowick or the components in Paul Landacre’s The Press.

The image shows a composition of geometric shapes and bold lines creating depth and movement. Shapes such as circles, triangles, and rectangles interlock and overlap. There are zigzag lines on the left, a curved form resembling a fire hydrant, and a heart-shaped form with eye-like circles in the center. Vertical shapes resemble buildings, some with striped patterns and signs saying "Shop" and "Cafe."
Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry
Closed January 21, 2018

This landmark exhibition examines the artistic exchanges among Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries from the mid-1650s to around 1680, when they reached the height of their technical ability and mastery of genre painting.

In this vertical painting, a woman stands near the corner of a dimly lit room, facing our left in profile and looking down at a balance she holds suspended in her right hand over a wooden table. She wears a peacock-blue velvet jacket with a white hood and fur lining, and a voluminous, mustard-yellow skirt. A window near the upper left corner is partially covered by a canary-yellow curtain. Light coming in through that window falls on the pale skin of the woman's face and hands, and highlights the white trim of her garment. Her left hand, closer to us, rests on the edge of the table near two open boxes, and a blue cloth is bunched at the back of the table to our left. Gold chains and pearl strands drape over the edge of one box. The woman stands in front of a framed painting. Much of the detail is lost in shadow but at the top center of the painting, a person surrounded by a golden halo floats in the sky with both arms raised, and is flanked by people encased within a bank of clouds. Nude people on the ground below in the painting, seen to either side of the woman, writhe, twist, and point upward.
Bosch to Bloemaert: Early Netherlandish Drawings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Closed January 7, 2018
Fragonard: The Fantasy Figures
Closed December 3, 2017

Combining art, fashion, science, and conservation, this revelatory exhibition brings together—for the first time—some 14 of the paintings known as the fantasy figures by Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806).

Shown from the lap up, a young woman with pale skin, wearing a goldenrod-yellow dress, sits reading a small book, facing our left in profile in this vertical painting. The deep, scooped neckline of her rich yellow gown is edged with lace and decorated with a mauve-purple bow at the bust. Her chest is covered by sheer white fabric under a ruffled, pleated collar. The ruff is tied at the back with another mauve bow, and a ribbon of the same color ties up her chestnut-brown hair. She has a delicate nose and rosebud mouth, and she tips her head down to read the book she holds in one hand. She sits against an oversize pillow streaked with pale lilac and deep rose pink. Her left arm, closer to us, is draped over a railing that extends across the width of the canvas. The background behind her is streaked with tan and muted teal blue. A vertical strip of light caramel brown along the right edge of the canvas suggests another wall against which the pillow rests. The artist’s loose, lively brushstrokes are visible throughout.
Posing for the Camera: Gifts from Robert B. Menschel
Closed January 28, 2018
Recent Acquisitions: Made in California
Closed May 18, 2018
Exhibition: Saul Steinberg
Closed July 16, 2018
The image displays an intricate network of overlapping geometric shapes and lines, forming an abstract composition. Lines of varying thicknesses and colors intersect, creating a complex pattern reminiscent of an abstract city map or circuit board. Rectangles and other polygons are interspersed with circular arcs. Some sections suggest envelopes and postal marks, hinting at familiar elements like postal correspondence intertwined in the abstract design. The use of red, blue, and green lines adds dynamic movement across the piece.

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