Note: Please discard previous calendars. This information is current as of December 2023. For more news about the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), visit the press room.
Upcoming Exhibitions
New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024
April 14–August 11, 2024
Visionary artists reimagine the past, present alternate realities and inspire audiences to create different futures. During the past few years, our world has been transformed by a global pandemic, advocacy for social reform and political division. How have these extraordinary times inspired artists? Works by the 28 artists featured in New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 explore these ideas from perspectives that shift across geographies, cultural viewpoints and time.
New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024 is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts and sponsored by the museum’s participating outreach committees. The exhibition is made possible by the Clara M. Lovett Emerging Artists Fund and the Sue J. Henry and Carter G. Phillips Exhibition Fund, with additional funding provided by Share Fund.
Labor and Love: Suchitra Mattai
September 20, 2024–January 12, 2025
In her multifaceted artistic practice, Suchitra Mattai (b. 1973, Georgetown, Guyana) explores and complicates understandings of binaries such as East and West, art and craft, and history and memory. The way certain histories are remembered—or not—is central to much of her art. This exhibition pairs Mattai’s recent work, including mixed-media installation and sculpture, with historical objects sourced from nearby collections in Washington, D.C. For the first time, this exhibition provides the opportunity for a visual call and response between historical objects and Mattai’s contemporary work.
Current Exhibitions
The Sky’s the Limit
Through February 24, 2024
The contemporary sculptures in this exhibition dangle from the ceiling, cascade down walls and extend far beyond their footprint on the gallery floor. Process-focused sculptures were pioneered by women creators in the mid-20th century, and they continually expand and redefine this medium. Never-before-exhibited artworks from the museum’s collection by Sonya Clark, Beatriz Milhazes, Cornelia Parker, Mariah Robertson, Shinique Smith and Joana Vasconcelos form the core of this presentation. They illuminate how artists use scale and the allure of materials for maximum impact. Towering artworks on view feature an array of found objects such as silver-plated vessels, hair combs, ostrich eggs and parasols, as well as essential materials ranging from aluminum to wool.
The Sky’s the Limit is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. This exhibition is underwritten by Presenting Sponsor Denise Littlefield Sobel.
Curatorial research funds were provided by Marcia Myers Carlucci. Additional support for the exhibition catalogue comes from The Deborah Buck Foundation.
In Focus: Artists at Work
Through September 22, 2024
Enjoy a close-up look into the practices and perspectives of eight contemporary collection artists via short documentary-style videos. Presented in NMWA’s ground-floor Long Gallery, welcoming visitors to the renewed museum, these videos feature Ambreen Butt, Sonya Clark, Colette Fu, the Guerrilla Girls, Graciela Iturbide, Delita Martin, Rania Matar and Alison Saar. The installation’s intimate and immersive design sparks curiosity, inspires advocacy and encourages slow looking during visitors’ exploration of the museum. Dynamic graphic panels include information about each artist and share online resources as well as a map leading to their art on view at NMWA. Presented in two phases, with four artists highlighted in each phase, this series spotlights groundbreaking women artists at work today.
For this project, NMWA partnered with Emmy and James Beard award-winning film production company Smartypants and experiential design firm Art Processors to ensure an accessible and enriching experience.
In Focus: Artists at Work is produced by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in collaboration with Smartypants Pictures and Art Processors.
The video series is generously supported by the members of NMWA. Project design is made possible through the generous support of Denise Littlefield Sobel, with additional funding provided by Jamie Gorelick and Richard Waldhorn.
Display screens contributed by Sony Corporation of America.
Hung Liu: Making History
Through October 20, 2024
“Weeping” paintings and prints by Hung Liu (1948–2021)—featuring signature paint drips, layers of color, and cultural symbols—pay homage to overlooked figures in history, predominantly vulnerable women and children from the artist’s native China. Liu lived through Mao Zedong’s totalitarian regime during the Cultural Revolution before immigrating to the U.S., and her work reveals boundless empathy for the plights of the working class. Drawing inspiration from a collection of vintage photographs that she discovered on a return visit to China in the 1990s, she portrays migrant laborers, sex workers, female soldiers and refugees with dignity, endurance, strength and courage.
Hung Liu: Making History is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibition is generously supported by Stephanie Sale and the members of NMWA.
Impressive: Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella
Through October 20, 2024
The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua (1675), an extraordinary series of 25 prints by 17th-century French artist Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella (1641–1676) is presented at NMWA for the first time in almost 15 years. The exhibition explores the circumstances of the work’s creation and focuses on Bouzonnet-Stella’s life in Paris, where she lived and worked with her uncle, artist Jacques Stella, in his prestigious lodgings in the Louvre. There, she produced copies of his paintings and accepted commissions for works such as The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua, her best-known work.
Impressive: Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibition is generously supported by Stephanie Sale and the members of NMWA.
Holding Ground: Artists’ Books for the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Through October 20, 2024
Nine new works by celebrated book artists inaugurate NMWA’s new Learning Commons and its reinvigorated Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center. Some of the artists reflect on NMWA as a special place for art by women. Others remind viewers that creativity is expressed in other environs, from small interiors to vast outdoor geographies. Above all, the artists’ books celebrate the varied spaces where women’s creativity blooms. Participating artists include Alisa Banks, Adjoa J. Burrowes, Julie Chen, Suzanne Coley, IBé Crawley, Maricarmen Solis Diaz, Colette Fu, Kerry McAleer-Keeler and María Verónica San Martín.
Holding Ground: Artists’ Books for the National Museum of Women in the Arts is organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The exhibition is made possible by a generous bequest from Marjorie B. Rachlin.
Remix: The Collection
Ongoing
Remix showcases familiar collection favorites as well as never-before-exhibited recent acquisitions. Artworks are grouped around themes, in some cases anchored by a medium and in others by an idea, that resonate among global artists across time, including photography, fiber works, the colors red and purple, nature, domesticity and more.
Remix: The Collectionis organized by the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
The exhibition is sponsored by Lugano Diamonds.
Additional funding provided by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sue J. Henry and Carter G. Phillips Exhibition Fund, and the Clara M. Lovett Emerging Artists Fund.
Information
Hours: 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; closed Mondays and select holidays
Location: 1250 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005, two blocks north of Metro Center
Admission: $16 for adults, $13 for D.C. residents and visitors 70 and over; free for visitors 21 and under and visitors with disabilities. Admission is free the first Sunday and second Wednesday of each month.
Information: nmwa.org, 202-783-5000
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