Exhibition Events in DC

Guided Tour: Hirshhorn Highlights offers a conversation-based exploration of selected works from the Hirshhorn’s collections and exhibitions. Led by a Gallery Guide, the experience uses close looking, critical discussion, and shared connections to introduce visitors to significant artists and ideas from 20th- and 21st-century art.

Guided Tour: Big Things for Big Rooms is a gallery experience at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden focused on selected works from the museum’s exhibitions and collections. Through close observation, discussion, and critical thinking, participants will explore the art and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries while making connections among ideas and artistic practices.

Jeremy Wright’s exhibition, *Thunder Gods*, explores identity, perception, and the tension between what is real and what is perceived. The ceramicist and sculptor creates work with intriguing imagery and considered details, encouraging viewers to look beyond their first impressions. His recurring totemic imagery includes bears, eagles, and bison.

The Italian Collection: A Guided Tour focuses on portraiture within the National Gallery of Art’s Italian painting collection. Led by Professor Annelise Brody Morani, the program examines how portraiture developed among Italian painters, introduces the artists, and explains the different purposes portraits served. Two language options are offered: an English tour followed by an Italian tour.

“50 for 50: Michele Banks” presents Banks’ *Forces of Nature* series, a collection of ink-on-Yupo paintings about the invisible forces that shape the world. Drawing from physics, biology, and neuroscience, the work combines geometric forms, expressive ink, and organic visual elements to connect scientific ideas with human creativity.

Third Thursday at The Phillips Collection offers free extended museum hours with opportunities to explore the collection and attend Spotlight Talks. The museum’s Bread Furst café will serve its full menu along with aperitifs, wine, and beer, and visitors can also stop by participating nearby arts organizations.

This guided outdoor tour explores selected works in the Hirshhorn’s Sculpture Garden through close observation, discussion, and critical thinking. Led by a Gallery Guide, the experience connects visitors with artists and ideas from 20th- and 21st-century art while encouraging new ways of thinking about artmaking.

Guided Tour: Modern Sculpture and the Human Form offers a close-looking and discussion-based exploration of selected works from the Hirshhorn’s modern and contemporary art collections and exhibitions. Led by a Gallery Guide, the tour invites participants to consider the artists, ideas, connections, and creative practices represented in the museum’s sculpture holdings and other works on view.

Haenyeo: The Breath of Jeju is a special exhibition presented by the Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C. in collaboration with Jeju Special Self-Governing Province. It explores the lives, cultural heritage, and community traditions of Jeju Island’s haenyeo, the renowned women free divers whose knowledge and practices are closely connected to the sea.

Hanji: Embracing Color presents the sculptural, tactile, and chromatic possibilities of hanji, traditional Korean paper, through the work of artist Lee Seung-chul. The exhibition brings together hanji sculptures, natural-dye textiles, historical paper relics, and objects inspired by Korea’s cultural heritage, including Buddhist forms, moon jars, and fragments of traditional bandaji chest furniture.

Calloway Fine Art & Consulting presents an exhibition by Bernard Dellario and Jean Schwartz centered on light, luminosity, and reflections. *Chasing the Light: From Paris to the Peloponnese* invites visitors to consider the beauty and emotional power of light through works inspired by Paris and the Greek Peloponnese.

What Remains/The Vietnam War and its Reckoning is an exhibition of work by intercultural artists who served during the Vietnam War. Through sculpture, painting, and repurposed materials, the exhibition examines the conflict and the ways military service shaped the artists’ identities, lives, and creative practices. The work considers what endures after violence and what forms of transformation or resistance may emerge from its aftermath.

I Fiori is an exhibition by Kathryn Camicia, curated by Robert Cwiok and Iza Thomas, at Studio Gallery. The exhibition is on view from October 28 through November 21, 2026, and presents a catalogue of floral works made in 2026 using combinations of latex, oil, Flashe, pigment stick, and pigment.

Profusion is an exhibition of paintings by Lisa Battle at Studio Gallery, curated by Robert Cwiok and Iza Thomas. The works explore nature’s abundance through layered impressions of printed leaves, vines, and other botanical forms. As the layers accumulate, individual shapes merge into larger, interconnected tangles that evoke wild landscapes and humanity’s place within the living world.

Multiple Exposures Gallery presents two fine-art photography exhibitions featuring new member artists at the Torpedo Factory Art Center. “Living Geometry” showcases work by Anice Hoachlander, while Alistair Corden’s “What Is Left Behind” explores a separate body of photographic work.

Living Geometry is an exhibition of macro photographs by Anice Hoachlander that reveals architectural order in the natural world. Through close studies of flowers, leaves, and fungi, Hoachlander explores their symmetry, structure, and geometric patterns.

What is left behind is a photography exhibition by Alistair Corden featuring black-and-white images of abandoned farmhouses across the northern Great Plains. The work considers the traces, structures, and remnants that endure after the people who once lived in these places have departed. The exhibition is presented alongside Anice Hoachlander’s Living Geometry as part of a shared presentation celebrating Multiple Exposures Gallery’s newest members.

Patricia Williams: *Transformations and Importations* examines how creative ideas travel across music, history, and artistic media. Williams traces connections from a secular love song dating to around 1600, through Bach’s 1656 Christian passion hymn and Tom Glazer’s 1947 protest song, to Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “American Tune.” She then reinterprets that musical lineage as visual art.

Gale Wallar’s *Parallelismus* examines the visual order found in nature through contrast, repetition, emphasis, proportion, and balance. The exhibition also explores sensory elements such as color, line, value, mass, and space, highlighting the symmetrical alignments that can create harmony amid a chaotic world.

Late Fall Group Show is a group exhibition at Touchstone Gallery featuring work by 23 artists. The participating artists are Amy Sabrin, Anice Hoachlander, Carolyn Marshall Wright, Debra Perkins, Dee Levinson, Elena Tchernomazova, Hernan Murno, Jazz Williams, Jenny Singleton, Jill Brantley, Jonathan Fuentes, Lesley Clarke, Linda Bankerd, Makda Kibour, Marthe McGrath, Mary D. Ott, Maryam Rassapour, McCain McMurray, Neville Barbour, Sue Canuteson, Susan Dykeman, Veronica Barker-Barzel, and Yoshiko Ratliff.

Guided Tour: Hirshhorn Highlights offers a focused exploration of selected works from the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collections and exhibitions. Led through close looking, discussion, and critical thinking, the tour examines artists and ideas from 20th- and 21st-century art while encouraging connections among different approaches to making art.

Join a Gallery Guide for an outdoor exploration of the Hirshhorn’s Sculpture Garden. The tour uses selected works on view to encourage close looking, critical thinking, and conversation about the art and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Participants can make connections across artistic ideas and practices while discovering new ways to engage with the Hirshhorn’s exhibitions and collection.

Guided Tour: Modern Sculpture and the Human Form is a gallery experience at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden focused on selected works from the museum’s collections and exhibitions. Led through close observation, discussion, and critical thinking, the tour examines modern and contemporary artists, their ideas, and the connections among different approaches to making art.

Brick City is an exhibition of LEGO®-built architecture by U.K. artist Warren Elsmore. It takes visitors on a tour across all seven continents, featuring detailed recreations ranging from Cartagena streets and New Orleans Mardi Gras scenes to temples, castles, the Roman Colosseum, and London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

$125 and Under is a Del Ray Artisans members’ art exhibit featuring a wide range of original artwork, with every piece priced at $125 or less. The gallery is free and open to the public, making the show accessible to art lovers looking for affordable work to purchase.

Join a Gallery Guide for an hour-long exploration of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s collections and current exhibitions. Through close looking, critical thinking, and conversation, the tour examines selected works and the artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, drawing connections among ideas, materials, and approaches to artmaking.

Saodat Ismailova: *Melted into the Sun* is the first major solo museum presentation in the United States devoted to the film and installation artist. The exhibition explores Central Asia’s traditions, oral histories, landscapes, and complicated modern history through moving images, sound, text, archival film, and contemporary works. Ismailova’s imagery moves from the Amu Darya River to ancient ruins and Soviet-era power stations, combining research, family stories, Iranian and Islamic philosophies, and reflections on time, memory, and environmental change.

50 for 50 Installation: Beth Nogay Carenbauer presents four works by Washington, DC-based artist Beth Nogay Carenbauer in the windows of Touchstone Gallery throughout November. Drawing on her West Virginia roots, Carenbauer creates quilt-like wall hangings from vintage and everyday objects, combining the traditions of quilting with unconventional materials and arrangements.

“On Our Own” is a visual arts exhibit featuring multimedia works by artists from Reston Community Center’s Art Lab. The exhibition celebrates the diversity, quality, and creativity of the Art Lab community, with works created in acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, collage, oil pastel, and other mediums.

Reston Art Gallery and Studios (RAGS) presents “Color Connects,” a visual arts exhibition at historic Lake Anne Plaza. The artists’ collective showcases one-of-a-kind jewelry, original prints, photography, watercolor, mixed-media collage, and acrylic and oil paintings, offering visitors a range of artist-made work to explore.

CANstruction is a creative design-build competition organized in Washington, D.C., in which architecture and design teams create sculptures from canned food. The sculptures, inspired this year by historic U.S. monuments and landmarks, are displayed in the National Building Museum’s Great Hall. After the event, the shelf-stable food is donated to the Capital Area Food Bank for distribution to people in need.

“Through the Eye of the Needle #4” is a group quilt exhibition by the Cotting Quilters, presented in the Jo Ann Rose Gallery at Reston Community Center Lake Anne. The show brings together fabric artwork in both traditional and contemporary styles, including full-sized quilts, art quilts, wall hangings, table runners, and other textile pieces.

Vertical Beings is a solo exhibition of new work by Celeste Rogers exploring rooted, entwined life forms that remain connected to the earth while reaching upward. The exhibition considers the tension between physical grounding and transcendence, focusing on forms caught between gravity and the sky.

“dance, dance, dance” is a movable textile installation by Claire Alrich that transforms Rhizome’s upstairs space into a three-dimensional painting visitors can enter. Combining fabric and light, the month-long work invites visitors to shape their own experience of changing materials, shifting space, and embodied movement. The installation treats each visitor as a kind of director and offers a setting for experimenting with change and inhabiting a softer physical presence.

My Conversations with Luis Barragán is a photography installation by Mexican-American artist Martirene Alcántara, presented by the Mexican Cultural Institute. The exhibition explores Luis Barragán’s architecture through perception, memory, and emotion, treating his spaces as experiences to be felt rather than simply observed. Alcántara’s photographs draw attention to light, color, geometry, rhythm, silence, shadows, reflections, and fleeting details that can transform architecture into a personal and emotional encounter.

Build/Erase is a group exhibition examining how artists use acts of addition and removal to shape meaning, form, and experience. Grounded in monochromatic aesthetics, the exhibition considers contrasts such as light and darkness, clarity and obscurity, and the ways creation and communication can emerge from a limited visual vocabulary.

American University Museum presents *noon-mool* (“tears”), a major solo exhibition by Korean artist Ahn Chang-Hong. Spanning the museum’s second and third floors, the exhibition brings together recent paintings, sculpture, multimedia works, selected earlier paintings, and pieces from Ahn’s acclaimed *Taxidermy* series. Across these media, he examines history, memory, violence, mortality, social realities, and the vulnerability of human life.

Beyond Words: The Sacred Art of Ayesha Kamal presents a collection of large-scale mixed-media paintings by internationally exhibited contemporary Islamic calligrapher Ayesha Kamal. Drawing on verses from the Holy Qur’an, Asma-ul-Husna (the Beautiful Names of Allah), and centuries of Islamic artistic tradition, Kamal transforms sacred text into contemporary visual experiences through intricate calligraphy, expressive textures, luminous metallic elements, and richly layered compositions.

Observer: The Street Photographs of Norman S. Carr presents black-and-white street photographs made between 2000 and 2004, when Carr began exploring photography after a forty-year career as a lawyer. Drawing on his experience as a collector of important twentieth-century American photography, Carr developed a personal visual language focused on the distinctive and universal qualities of places.

Ken Jacobs’s *wager any umbrella* presents artifacts from a software and poetry project that investigates how words can emerge across the boundaries between spoken sounds. The exhibition includes poems, scrolls, drapes, panels, and a digital visualization generated from a word-boundary scanner.

El Marsam: Modern and Contemporary Art from Egypt traces the origins, development, and continuing influence of Egypt’s modern art movement. Curated by Heba El Kayal, the exhibition considers how Egyptian artists have negotiated international modernist ideas alongside local traditions, subjects, and visual languages.

Weaving an Empire: Textiles of the Inka World examines the cultural and political importance of textiles in the Andean world. The exhibition brings together nearly 50 objects from the Inka state and the many communities incorporated into its empire, including garments, reconstructed clothing, khipus, and painted drinking vessels.

Jonathan Fuentes: Melen’s Toy Shop is presented at Touchstone Gallery from November 27 through December 23, 2026. The event begins with a Black Friday Toy Shop Preview, followed by a gallery reception the next day.

Racquel Keller’s *Analyze This* is a surreal exhibition that explores the intersection of dreams, memory, and imagination. Drawing on psychological symbolism and personal experience, Keller creates an intentionally ambiguous environment that invites visitors to form their own interpretations.

Out of Bounds is a group exhibition presented by Hamiltonian Artists and The Kreeger Museum, bringing together work by seven Hamiltonian alumni with selected contemporary pieces from The Kreeger Museum’s permanent collection. Across painting, photography, sculpture, video, and installation, the exhibition examines how boundaries are established, enforced, crossed, and reimagined.

Reston Art Gallery and Studios (RAGS) presents “Holiday Sparkle,” a seasonal exhibition and shopping opportunity at historic Lake Anne Plaza. The artists’ collective showcases handmade and original work, including jewelry, prints, photography, watercolor, mixed-media collage, and acrylic and oil paintings. Giftable pieces by RAGS artists will be available throughout the event.

Season of Hope is presented at CH/Art during the holiday season, running from December 1 through December 31, 2026. The event page lists the presentation as a monthlong engagement.

In the Library: Reimagining America by Design examines the Great Depression-era Index of American Design through the research and creative work of students from George Washington University’s Corcoran School for the Arts & Design. The exhibition is presented in two phases: first, a behind-the-scenes look at the students’ semester-long research and exhibition-making process, followed by a selection of historical objects made for children.

One for You, One for Me is a holiday art show and shopping opportunity at Fire On Studio 22, the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s first-floor 3-D gallery. The exhibition encourages visitors to find thoughtful handmade gifts while also choosing something enjoyable for themselves, with original glass, pottery, jewelry, prints, paintings, ornaments, ceramics, and other artisan-made work.

Interwoven: A Tradition of Textiles explores the artistry, technical skill, and cultural significance of textiles across centuries. Drawing on Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens’ collection, the exhibition places historic textiles alongside contemporary works by textile and fiber artists.

Adam Pendleton: Love, Queen is the Hirshhorn Museum’s first solo exhibition in Washington, DC dedicated to Adam Pendleton. The exhibition brings together new and recent paintings with a single-channel video installation, using the museum’s architecture and the history of the National Mall to examine the artist’s contributions to contemporary American painting.

Back and Forth: Rozeal., Titian, Cezanne explores unexpected visual and historical connections among four paintings created across six centuries and different cultural contexts. The exhibition considers art history as a conversation in which artists draw on, reinterpret, and become part of earlier traditions.

Celebrate is a seasonal holiday exhibition presented by Potomac Fiber Arts in Studio 29 at the Torpedo Factory Art Center. The exhibition highlights fiber art, wearable pieces, and home décor, with handmade clothing, jewelry, quilts, scarves, shawls, wall art, and other giftable works.

“Brushwork: Motion & Movement” is a Chinese brush painting exhibit by Tracie Griffith Tso, featuring spontaneous depictions of flowers, birds, and animals. Tso works in traditional ink on rice paper and silk, using bamboo-handled wolf-hair brushes to create expressive, freestyle images.

From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art brings twenty-six exceptional works from the Musée du Louvre’s Islamic art collection to Washington for the first time. Spanning the seventh through nineteenth centuries and a geographic range from Spain to India, the exhibition highlights the objects’ technical brilliance and artistic refinement, including a Syrian-Egyptian basin inlaid with silver figures, the enigmatic Andalusian bronze Lion of Monzón, an Iznik peacock plate, and a monumental jeweled portrait of the Persian ruler Fath Ali Shah Qajar.

Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe is the first major retrospective devoted to acclaimed Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk) artist Truman Lowe (1944–2019). The exhibition surveys the development of his work through nearly 50 sculptures, drawings, and paintings, including rarely seen monumental pieces and important works from public and private collections.

Ch/Art presents a juried exhibition showcasing the range of work created by its member artists. Each artist may submit up to three pieces, and juror Walt Bartman selects the strongest work from each artist’s submissions. The exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, jewelry, fiber arts, and other forms of visual art, offering a vibrant showcase during the holiday season.

MoCA Arlington presents Emily Fussner’s site-specific installation *Some Shining Coil of Wind*, an immersive meditation on place, resilience, light, and the fleeting details of everyday surroundings. The work combines paper-pulp sculptures, video, sound, shimmering mylar, and a floor covering to create an environment shaped by sunlight, shadows, wind, and the sounds of urban life.

Avery, Gottlieb & Rothko: By the Sea examines the friendship and artistic exchange among Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko, three major figures in American art. Focusing especially on the inspiration they drew from summers in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on Cape Ann, the exhibition considers how shared experiences and mutual support shaped their work.

Marlo Pascual: Making Something Out of Something examines how photography can take on the physical presence and meaning of sculpture. Pascual (1972–2020) worked with anonymous photographs found in thrift stores and online, enlarging, cropping, fragmenting, obscuring, tearing, folding, and sometimes shattering them. These interventions make familiar imagery strange and occasionally humorous, while also introducing an unsettling sense of damaged or interrupted bodies and faces.

The 28th annual “Gifts from the HeART” exhibit is an art sale benefiting Cornerstones. Original works in watercolor, mixed media, photography, clay, wood, and fused glass are displayed and offered for purchase in RCC Lake Anne’s Jo Ann Rose Gallery and 3D Gallery.

Portrait of Lloyd Patterson explores the history of Black Americans in the Soviet Union through a portrait of artist Lloyd Walton Patterson. The work is presented as a long-term loan alongside Hillwood’s Russian art holdings, placing Patterson’s story within the museum’s broader presentation of Russian art and cultural history.

Beverly Pepper: Land Art and Monumental Sculptures presents gallery-sized sculptures by Beverly Pepper, including works from the National Museum of Women in the Arts collection, models for monumental pieces, and a new film about the artist’s large-scale projects. Pepper (1922–2020) was known for pioneering, hands-on work with iron, steel, and earth—materials historically associated with male artists—and for exploring how sculpture interacts with both rural and urban environments.

Paws and Kinship is a 2D art exhibit by Del Ray Artisans members, presented at VCA Old Town Animal Hospital. The exhibit explores the emotional bond between people and animals and invites visitors to celebrate the creatures who share their lives. Artwork is displayed in the hospital’s lobby and hallway, including “Opal” by Rod Whyte.

Big Things for Big Rooms traces the development of immersive, large-scale artwork from the late 1960s to the present. Drawn largely from the Hirshhorn’s collection, the exhibition features 10 artworks, including five being shown at the museum for the first time.

A Museum in the Making examines how Charles Lang Freer transformed his Detroit home into an experimental setting for art, working with artists, architects, and designers to coordinate paintings, pottery, architecture, lighting, furniture, windows, walls, and frames. The exhibition connects those early experiments to the National Museum of Asian Art’s own galleries and celebrates Freer’s continuing influence on the museum.

Tranquil Nature is a Gallery Without Walls art exhibit featuring two-dimensional artwork by Del Ray Artisans members. The exhibition brings together works in a variety of media and styles, all centered on the theme of nature. One featured work is “Orange Mountains” by Stephanie M. Willer.

For the Love of Virginia is a Gallery Without Walls art exhibit featuring two-dimensional works in a variety of media by Del Ray Artisans members. The exhibit celebrates Virginia’s landscapes and communities, from the Blue Ridge Mountains and rural areas to the Eastern Shore’s beaches, as well as the state’s cities, local flora, and fauna.

Yoshitomo Nara: Sentinels of Stillness inaugurates the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden’s West Lawn with three monumental sculptures by globally renowned Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara. The exhibition explores the relationship between Nara’s life experience and the premodern sculptural practice of hand-building with clay, while inviting visitors to pause, contemplate, and engage with the works’ forms and changing play of light.

How Can You Forget Me: Filipino American Stories, presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, examines the overlooked history of a pioneering Filipino community in California from the 1910s through the 1970s. The exhibition centers on 26 steamer trunks recovered in 2005, with three displayed in the gallery. The trunks were preserved by Legionarios del Trabajo, a fraternal organization that safeguarded deceased members’ personal belongings for return to their families or collection by loved ones.

Remix: The Collection rethinks how museum collections are organized by challenging traditional, gender-based hierarchies that have often elevated white European and American artists and conventional media. Across the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the exhibition brings together work by women artists from six continents and six centuries in thematic installations that highlight the breadth, experimentation, and cultural significance of their practices.

Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations examines the diplomatic relationship between Indian Nations and the United States from the colonial era to the present. The exhibition highlights the importance of Native diplomats and leaders, whose influence is often overlooked in conventional accounts of American history, and explores the continuing history and legacy of treaties.