Featured Upcoming Exhibition
The Sky’s the Limit
Never-before-exhibited contemporary sculptures 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. 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.

All Upcoming Exhibitions
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Remix: The Collection
Oct 21, 2023, to Oct 21, 2025Remix 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.
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
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In Focus: Artists at Work
Oct 21, 2023, to Sep 22, 2024Enjoy 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.
Rendering of In Focus: Artists at Work installation; Courtesy of experiential design and technology company Art Processors.
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Impressive: Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella
Oct 21, 2023, to Oct 20, 2024The 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.
Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella, Plate 1 from "L'Entree de l'Empereur Sigismond a Mantoue", 1675; Engraving on paper, 9 x 19 1/2 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift of Chris Petteys; Photo by Lee Stalsworth
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Holding Ground: Artists’ Books for the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Oct 21, 2023, to Oct 20, 2024Nine 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.
Bound to Amaze: Inside a Book-Collecting Career Installation; Photo credit Lee Stalsworth
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Hung Liu: Making History
Oct 21, 2023, to Oct 20, 2024“Weeping” paintings and prints by Hung Liu (1948–2021) features signature paint drips, layers of color, and cultural symbols that 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, Women Working: Loom, 1999; Softground etching, spitbite aquatint with scraping and burnishing on paper, 31 1/2 x 41 3/4 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Promised Gift of Steven Scott, Baltimore, in loving memory of his grandmother, Anna Kemper Albert; © Hung Liu
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New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024
Apr 14 to Aug 11, 2024Visionary 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.
Meryl McMaster, Lead Me to Places I Could Never Find on My Own I, from the series “As Immense as the Sky,” 2019; Digital C-print, 40 x 60 in.; Courtesy of the artist, Stephen Bulger Gallery, and Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain