Current Exhibitions

Close-up detail of an abstract painting with very thick and gestural brushstrokes of mostly orange paint.

Featured Current Exhibition

Feb 28 to Aug 10, 2025
Unearthly, enigmatic, and psychologically tense, the works in Uncanny give form to women artists’ powerful expressions of existential unease. This exhibition surveys the use of the uncanny from the Surrealist movement to the present. Artists subvert gender stereotypes and explore feminist issues through disquieting spaces, fantastical figures, and technology that appears eerily human.
View Exhibition: Uncanny
A light-skinned female ventriloquist dummy with straight black hair smiles in the center of a circle of six male dummy dolls with brown and dark hair.
Laurie Simmons, The Music of Regret IV, 1994; Cibachrome print, 19 1/2 x 19 1/2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Promised gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in honor of NMWA Director Susan Fisher Sterling; © 2019 Laurie Simmons

All Current Exhibitions

  • In Focus: Artists at Work

    Oct 21, 2023, to Apr 20, 2025

    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, these captivating short films welcome visitors to the renewed museum. The installation’s intimate and immersive design sparks curiosity, inspires advocacy, and encourages slow looking during visitors’ exploration of the museum. The videos will premiere throughout the year. 

    A dark gallery space with three large screens playing a video. Three tufted benches are in front of the screens. On the right wall, it says "In Focus: Artists at Work."

    In Focus: Artists at Work (installation view) at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Photo by Joy Asico-Smith

  • Remix: The Collection

    Oct 21, 2023, to Oct 21, 2025

    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.

    A horizontal canvas combines collaged paper, such as a scrap of a U.S. map, comic strip, and pictographs; cloth swatches; scrawled and dripped paint; and phrases like “It takes hard work to keep racism alive” and “Oh! Zone.” The work’s title appears in red paint right of center.

    Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Indian, Indio, Indigenous, 1992; Oil and collage on canvas, 60 x 100 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Museum purchase: Members' Acquisition Fund; Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

  • Samantha Box: Confluences

    Nov 20, 2024, to Mar 23, 2025

    Bronx-based photographer Samantha Box (b. 1977, Kingston, Jamaica) navigates social and cultural landscapes through complex images exploring race, gender, class, and sexuality. Black-and-white documentary photographs from her series “Invisible” depict New York City’s LGBTQIA+ youth of color. The series reveals community-defined spaces and chosen family bonds that work to counter her subjects’ experiences with homophobia and transphobia. In vibrant staged images, Box’s ongoing studio practice, “Caribbean Dreams,” shifts inward, as the artist articulates her own diasporic Indo-Afro-Caribbean identity through personal and historical narratives.

    A black-and-white close-up image shows the face and upper body of a dark-skinned woman as she gazes off to the side. She wears a sleeveless white shirt, chain necklace with heart pendant, and large round earrings inscribed with the word “TAURUS.”

    Samantha Box, Kristen, on 34th Street, on her way to work on the stroll, from the series “The Shelter, The Street,” 2008; Archival inkjet print, 17 x 22 in. sheet; Courtesy of the artist; © Samantha Box