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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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.
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."

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