New Exhibitions

This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World
Currently On View

Renwick Gallery
Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street NW
Open daily: 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m. ET

This Present Moment: Crafting a Better Worldshowcases the dynamic landscape of American craft today. Activating both floors of gallery space, the exhibition presents 171 artworks from SAAM’s extensive holdings of modern and contemporary craft, in a range of craft mediums from fiber and ceramics to glass and mixed media. Artists including Bisa Butler, Wanxin Zhang, Tanya Aguiñiga, and Sonya Clark are among the 148 broadly representative and diverse group of American artists featured. The exhibition highlights the role that artists play in our world to spark essential conversations, stories of resilience, and methods of activism. To craft a better world, it must first be imagined.

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection
Opens July 1

Smithsonian American Art Museum
8th and G Streets, NW
Open daily: 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m. ET

We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection traces the rise of self-taught artists in the 20th century and examines how, despite wide-ranging societal, racial, and gender-based obstacles, their creativity and bold self-definition became major forces in American art. The exhibition showcases forty-three artists, including James Castle, Thornton Dial Sr., Howard Finster, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Nellie Mae Rowe, and Bill Traylor, among others. Acquired by Margaret Z. Robson, the collection reflects her belief that the stories from these artists offered a truer, more complete portrait of our nation's makers.

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