From Go-Go to Quilting, Here's Your Year at the National Gallery of Art

As the year draws to a close, we’re celebrating you! We’re sharing your favorites, from artists and artworks to stories, music, and more. 

More than 3 million visitors stepped through our doors in 2023. Even more of you from across the world explored our digital stories, videos, and posts. Everything you visited, created, and delighted in helped us see the National Gallery with fresh eyes. Here’s a tour of your top seven highlights of 2023.  

1. You expressed your creativity in vivid color

You made the National Gallery part of your creative rituals. Visitors of all ages got involved. 

You crafted construction paper quilts inspired by the beautiful quilts from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, featured in our exhibition Called to Create: Black Artists of the American South. 

You gestured with your whole bodies as we read classic books like Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar/La oruga muy hambrienta during bilingual Storytime. 

And you made your own expressive marks on our jumbo interactive canvases, Brushsters—an ever-popular attraction in our East Building Atrium. 

2. You danced to jazz, go-go, and so much more

Tens of thousands of visitors came out this year for our two after-hours events, Jazz in the Garden and National Gallery Nights. In May, you packed the room for legendary go-go band Rare Essence, who performed at our Homegrown night. At September’s Block Party, we grooved together on 4th Street Plaza to Missing Element’s beatboxing. The music put us in sync with one another, and as one partier put it, “made me feel like a real part of the community.”

3. You dressed to match the art

You donned your best for each occasion—someone at October’s Nightmare at the Museum even wore an inflatable blue rooster suit! What a homage to Katharina Fritsch’s iconic Hahn/Cock. We also spotted visitors whose outfits matched abstract works by Barnett Newman and Piet Mondrian. Another dressed as an artist whose work is admittedly lacking in our collection: Bob Ross.

4. You built a beautiful community

At the end of the night, it’s not about the sound and spectacle. It’s about the transformative power of being together. As one National Gallery Nights attendee told us:

“The night was wonderful and uplifting! I attended with my son, who is in middle school and he had a rough day at school. He said the night was epic and completely melted away his bad day. He loved interacting with people of all ages [and meeting] new people. . . it got him excited to visualize his future as a young adult experiencing the world.”

Thank you for making the National Gallery not just a destination to see art, but a place to gather and connect. Your eagerness to come together and build community lights up the whole museum.

5. You rediscovered the lost art of marble carving—and a lost painting

You were mesmerized by a time-lapse video of master sculptor Fred X. Brownstein recreating Antonio Canova’s bust of Venus—making it one of our most-watched videos of 2023. 

Using 18th-century sculpting techniques, Brownstein starts from a clay sketch, then pours Venus’s double into a plaster cast. Finally, he chips away at a hunk of marble until the fine, elegant likeness emerges.  

In Sculpt like a Great, also among our most watched videos, Brownstein explained how he learned these vanishing techniques. With many digital fabrication tools available today, it’s almost inconceivable to see someone achieve precise measurements using only analog tools like a plumb line.

On Instagram, more than three million of you watched our animation of Anne Vallayer-Coster’s Still Life with Flowers in an Alabaster Vase and Fruit. This painting was missing for centuries but is now a new addition to our collection. We’re so glad you enjoyed this luscious, floral artwork. Fun fact: it was the artist’s favorite too!

6. You got to know artists, both iconic and lesser known

To prepare for two blockbuster exhibitions, you read up on Philip Guston, the modernist who bore witness to injustice and corruption, and Johannes Vermeer, the revered Dutch master of light. You also met 15 LGBTQ+ artists, some incredibly famous (like Andy Warhol) and others lesser known, but all worth learning more about. 

7. You fell in love at the museum

The quiet spaces in the National Gallery served as a backdrop for romance. You snuck in tender moments with your beloved and gazed dreamily at works of art—and each other. Follow us on social media to find tips for a breathtaking date at the museum, and so much more. 

We can’t wait for the new year to make, create, dine, dance, linger, and look with you!