14 Museum Exhibits in DC to Check Out Before They Disappear
From celebrity portraits to limited-time shows where you’ll learn about money, baseball, and more.
Of the many national treasures to be found in DC, some of the most impressive are housed in the many museums around town. From some of the world’s most coveted gems in the National Mall’s Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to presidential renderings at the National Portrait Gallery and aerial accolades at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, the museum scene in DC is rife with educational and inspirational works that can appeal to a wide range of interests.
So if you’re looking for a way to spend a morning, an afternoon, or heck, a whole day learning and delighting in artifacts both old and new, check out one of DC’s many world-class museums. Whether you’re an art buff, a historian, or a naturalist, you’ll find something that piques your interest on this roundup of all the coolest museum exhibits in DC right now.
Called to Create at the National Gallery of Art (East Building)
Highlighting the works of Black artists from the south—including Thornton Dial, James “Son Ford” Thomas, Lonnie Holley, Mary T. Smith, and Purvis Young—this exhibit showcases pieces that draw from recycled materials as art supplies and were once displayed in yards, porches, or boarded-up storefronts as their galleries. The exhibit features nine quilts from the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, all constructed from worn clothing or other scraps of fabric.
Dates: Now through March 26
How to visit: The museum is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm.
This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World at The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery
The Renwick Gallery may be small, but it is a mighty museum hosting exhibits that always pack a punch. This Present Moment is no different, as it spotlights activism and resilience in art. The exhibit focuses in particular on women, people of color, and other underrepresented and marginalized populations, featuring nearly 150 artworks from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection and 135 new acquisitions making their public debut.
Dates: Now through April 2
How to visit: The museum is open daily from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
Unstill Waters at the National Museum of Asian Art
This exhibit, which opened in December, uses both still and moving images to explore the changing natural and built environments in India. Intended to encourage viewers to examine and consider the environmental and social issues affecting not only India, but the world at large, this beautiful exhibit pays homage to water and the importance it plays in our lives.
Dates: Now through June 11
How to visit: The museum is open every day except Tuesday from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
Looking Up: Studies for Ceilings at the National Gallery of Art (West Building)
This aptly-named exhibit calls upon the viewer to more closely examine the sometimes hard-to-see details of ceiling art, perfected over centuries in Europe. This exhibit, featuring around 30 examples of ceiling decoration from 1550 to 1800, showcases some of the most ambitious works of art ever painted dozens of feet above the viewer. Find both preliminary studies of works as well as large-scale models that mimic the intended final composition, and take a while to look up.
Dates: Now through July 9
How to visit: The museum is open daily from 10 am to 5 pm.
Portrait of a Nation: 2022 Honorees at the National Portrait Gallery
Since 2015, the Portrait of a Nation Awards celebrates individuals who have made transformative contributions to the US and its citizens. Currently being honored include chef and humanitarian José Andrés; music executive and philanthropist Clive Davis; filmmaker Ava DuVernay; attorney and children’s rights activist Marian Wright Edelman; leading public health expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci; and sisters, tennis stars, and entrepreneurs Serena and Venus Williams.
Dates: Now through October 2023
How to visit: The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11:30 am to 7 pm.
Why We Serve at the National Museum of the American Indian
This new exhibit seeks to answer the question: Why do Indigenous populations commit to the military and represent a country that overran their homelands, suppressed their cultures, and confined them to reservations? Through personal stories, this new exhibit examines that question while honoring the service of Native people in the military over the past 250 years.
Dates: Now through November 30
How to visit: Open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
A Window Suddenly Opens at the Hirshhorn Museum
The first survey of photography from Chinese artists whose work emerged in the last three decades, this exhibit showcases more than 180 pieces created between 1993 and 2022. Multigenerational artists have recently embraced print and digital photography, recorded performance, and video art as part of a broader cultural shift from group-based thinking toward greater individualism. Works from artists including Cang Xin, Cao Fei, Chen Shaoxiong, Cui Xiuwen, Gu Dexin, and Hai Bo will be on display as part of this exhibit.
Dates: Now through January 7, 2024
How to visit: The museum is open every day from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
Barro Colorado Island at the National Museum of Natural History
This exhibit pays homage to the centennial of Barro Colorado Island Research Station in Panama by immersing visitors in a Panamanian jungle. This research institute is now home to 1,200 scientists from 50 countries and helps to train young biologists (including, perhaps, some of the young visitors to this exhibit) on how to look for jaguar tracks and learn how lightning strikes may change the rainforest.
Dates: Now through January 2024
How to visit: The museum is open every day from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
Baseball: America’s Home Run at the National Postal Museum
This massively underrated museum deserves a visit any time of year, but now that a delayed exhibit paying homage to America’s favorite pastime is on display, there’s no better time to visit the National Postal Museum. Baseball: America’s Home Run features hundreds of stamps celebrating some of baseball’s brightest stars like Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth, as well as objects loaned by other Smithsonian museums and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, plus some memorabilia making its first public debut.
Dates: Now through January 2025
How to visit: The museum is open daily from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
American Witnesses at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This powerful exhibit, recommended for those age 13 and up, explores American reactions to the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. Using oral and written testimony, photographs, and film of the men and women who saw the atrocities of the Holocaust firsthand, the exhibit exposes and documents Nazi crimes and the challenges of bringing prisoners back to life. The exhibition includes an audio tour, as well as a transcript of the tour.
Dates: Ongoing
How to visit: The museum is open from 10 am to 5:30 pm daily except on Yom Kippur and Christmas Day. Timed entry passes are required.
Early Flight at the National Air and Space Museum
At long last, the National Air and Space Museum in DC has opened, joining its Virginia outpost (the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center) as a mecca for all things aeronautical. Check out Early Flight in the museum to explore how the 11 years from 1903 and 1914 jumpstarted aviation in the United States and beyond, with artifacts including the Lilienthal Glider, 1909 Wright Military Flyer, and the Blériot XI.
Dates: Ongoing
How to visit: The museum is open daily from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
Currents: Water in African Art at the National Museum of African Art
This exhibit recognizes the importance of water not only to our existence, but to many of the art forms in Africa. Many origin stories in African culture revolve around water, sometimes with this key element taking the form of spirits who can be both protective and dangerous. This powerful exhibit, part of the museum’s permanent collection, highlights the potency of water and the art that it inspires.
Dates: Ongoing
How to visit: The museum is open every day except Tuesday from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
The Value of Money at the National Museum of American History
With an entrance that is appropriately concealed by a vault door, this exhibit explores the origins of money, new monetary technologies, the political and cultural messages money conveys, numismatic art and design, and the practice of collecting money. Objects in the collection are among the rarest monetary items in the world, including a 1860 Japanese Oban coin that belonged to President Ulysses S. Grant and a $1 dollar silver certificate from 1896 featuring Martha Washington.
Dates: Ongoing
How to visit: The museum is open daily from 10 am to 5:30 pm.
Reckoning at the National Museum of African American History and Culture
This moving exhibit examines the ways in which art is, in and of itself, a form of protest. Reckoning pays homage to both artists and their subjects—including Eric Garner, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor—examining the demonstrations and communities that lifted up their voices. Tuliza Fleming, NMAAHC’s interim chief curator of visual arts, notes, “the exhibition seeks to forge connections between the Black Lives Matter protests, racial violence, grief and mourning, and hope and change.”
Dates: Ongoing
How to visit: The museum is open on Monday from noon to 5:30 pm, and Tuesday through Sunday from 10 am to 5:30 pm. Free timed-entry passes are required for admission.