Current Exhibitions

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

Featured Current Exhibition

All Current Exhibitions

  • 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

  • Oct 21, 2023, to Mar 30, 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 (installation view) at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; Photo by Joy Asico-Smith

  • Oct 21, 2023, to Oct 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 to 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.

    A black-and-white, horizontal print depicts multiple Roman-style male figures on horseback. They hold weapons or brass musical instruments and process, somewhat chaotically, towards the viewer's right.

    Antoinette Bouzonnet-Stella, Plate 25 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

  • 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.

    An artist's book, opened to reveal a pop-up of many colorful flowers in a vase. The pages are dark with black writing.

    Colette Fu, A Pop-up Book of Lilies, Roses, Iris, Pansies, Columbine, Love-in-a-Mist, Larkspur and Other Flowers in a Glass Vase on Table Top, Flanked by a Rose and a Carnation (detail), 2023; Archival pigment inkjet prints, repurposed cover and book pages, acid-free adhesives, and bonded leather, 17 1/4 x 11 3/4 x 8 3/4 in.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Gift made possible through the generosity of the artist and a bequest from Marjorie B. Rachlin; © Colette Fu; Photo by Colette Fu