Exhibitions

Learn how the featured artists mastered and subverted the everyday materials of cotton, felt, and wool to create deeply personal artworks.

Chicago-based artist Shawn Michael Warren painted Winfrey in a purple taffeta dress amidst a lush garden at her California home.

Jackson creates a series of haunting, yet profoundly beautiful and empowering encounters that draw upon African water spirits from Senegal to South Africa.

The Portrait Gallery recently acquired all 75 portraits from the Pulitzer-Prize winning photographer’s series and is celebrating the acquisition with a two-part exhibition.

One Life: Maya Lin is the first biographical exhibition of the architect, sculptor, and environmentalist.

#IfThenSheCan – The Exhibit is he largest collection of statues of women ever assembled together, to be installed on and around the National Mall.

The National Portrait Gallery presents the first major large-scale retrospective of work by Hung Liu, the internationally acclaimed Chinese-born American artist.

Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, is the first major thematic exhibition to explore the artistic achievements of Native women.

This project brings into being the missing legacy of female paleontologists to overcome societal stereotypes concerning gender and professional roles.

Pioneering feminist artist Yun Suk Nam (born 1939) uses portraiture to gain insights into the lives of women, past and present.

View the commissioned portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama.

This major retrospective of the Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick, includes 75 of her most notable works, primarily paintings on board and canvas as well as a selection of works on paper and small sculpture.

Elaine de Kooning’s gestural portraits of friends and family were much admired during her lifetime, and included many well-known Americans.

See Dave Woody's portrait of chef Alice Waters, founder of the restaurant Chez Panisse and the Edible Schoolyard and champion of the Slow Food Movement.

Photographer Zaida Ben-Yusuf (1869-1933) was an important figure in the pictorialist photography movement in late 19th and early 20th century New York.

This exhibition is dedicated to Hepburn, who carefully constructed and maintained her own myth through more than 50 years on stage, screen, and television.

See the major works that Freer acquired during his first 12 years as a collector— images of beautiful women by James McNeill Whistler, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, and Abbott Handerson Thayer.

Alma W. Thomas taught art at Shaw Junior High School in Washington, D.C. Retirement launched her meteoric artistic career.