From our museums in Washington, DC and New York City, to our traveling exhibitions in venues closer to home,
to our website and mobile apps, you will always find something worthwhile to discover and enjoy.
This 2024 pocket guide offers a small sample of the thousands of things to see and do at the
Smithsonian this year, all made possible thanks to the support of people like you.
June 8, 2019 - Permanent, National Museum of Natural History
The new David H. Koch Hall of Fossils showcases the museum's unrivaled collection of 46 million fossils re-positioned in new, dramatic, more scientifically-accurate positions, and presents the most up-to-date scientific research on how life on Earth has evolved.
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September 24, 2016 - Permanent, National Museum of African American History and Culture
As the centerpiece of the museum, this exhibition explores the complex story of slavery and freedom, a story standing at the core of our national experience.
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Summer 2017 - Permanent, National Museum of American History
At the heart of this nation lies a great search for balance between unity and pluralism. Many Voices: One Nation presents the five-hundred-year journey of how many distinct peoples and cultures met, mingled and created the culture of the United States.
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January 18, 2018 – 2027, National Museum of the American Indian
American Indian represent less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet names and images of Indians are everywhere: military weapons, town names, advertising and that holiday in November. American invites visitors to take a closer look, and to ask why.
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July 12, 2024 - April 20, 2025, National Portrait Gallery
Baldwin, who considered himself "a witness, about literature, about his works, about America and about history," often spoke out against injustice. At a time when he and his queer contemporaries had to keep their sexuality at least partly hidden, they could fight openly for civil rights. Baldwin’s efforts to ensure the United States "kept the faith" often drew recognition, overshadowing those of other like-minded collaborators, such as Bayard Rustin and Lorraine Hansberry. A celebration of their various queer voices, this collective portrait of sorts offers an admiring corrective.
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July 13, 2024 - July 26, 2026, Freer Gallery of Art
American painters Willard Metcalf, Dwight Tryon, Winslow Homer, and Abbott Thayer created profoundly beautiful views of the New England landscapes where they lived and worked. These paintings largely depict that environment as timeless and static. Shifting Boundaries looks at these works from a new angle by engaging a multiplicity of voices and viewpoints to explore what these paintings can tell us about changes to this region both past and present. As Shifting Boundaries reveals, the views these artists created of pasturelands in Massachusetts and of seascapes in Maine were transforming even as these artists recorded them. This reshaping of landscapes has only accelerated in the century since Metcalf, Tryon, Homer, and Thayer depicted them.
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August 24, 2024 - February 23, 2025, National Postal Museum
The presidential election year is the appropriate time to reflect on past examples of national voting by mail. This exhibition includes objects from the National Postal Museum collection, including a mailed tally sheet from 1864 recording the votes of soldiers from Highland County, Ohio; an absentee ballot request postcard for an Alabama soldier during World War II; a 5-cent postage stamp reminding citizens to register and vote; and a complete absentee ballot kit and instruction sheet from the last presidential election in 2020.
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August 31, 2024 - January 5, 2025, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Monumental in size and boldly illustrated, the Great Mongol Shahnama is the most celebrated of all medieval Persian manuscripts. Considered Iran’s national epic, the Shahnama (Book of kings) was completed by the poet Firdawsi in 1010. The copy known as the Great Mongol Shahnama was produced three hundred years later, likely commissioned by ruler Abu Sa'id of the Ilkhanid dynasty, a branch of the Mongol Empire. Between the manuscript’s covers, art, power, and history intertwined. An Epic of Kings offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see twenty-five folios from this now dismantled manuscript. It is also the first exhibition to present paintings from the Great Mongol Shahnama alongside contemporaneous works from China, the Mediterranean, and the Latin West. Experience this unique historical moment of cultural exchange across Eurasia—where commodities, people, and ideas circulated like never before—with Iran at its center.
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September 15, 2023 - August 4, 2024, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Alma Thomas is a singular figure in the story of twentieth-century American art. She developed her exuberant form of abstract painting late in life, after retiring from a long career as a schoolteacher. Blossoming in the mid-1960s, her vibrant, rhythmic art transcended established genres, incorporating elements of gestural abstraction and color field painting. She created a style distinctly her own, characterized by the dazzling interplay of pattern and hue. At a deeply politicized moment in American life, Thomas's abiding sources of inspiration were nature, the cosmos, and music. "Through color," she stated, "I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man." Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas draws on these extensive holdings to offer an intimate view of Thomas’s evolving practice during her most prolific period, 1959 to 1978. New research into her materials and techniques show how Thomas continued to innovate until the end of her life, at times changing her methods to adapt to her declining physical ability due to arthritis. As the luminous works in the exhibition reveal, Thomas’s astounding creative drive and mastery of color remained constant through her final years.
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November 18, 2023 - August 11, 2024, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
The genre-defying British contemporary artist and designer Es Devlin is globally renowned for her large-scale, illuminated installations and sculptures for performances. Her wide-ranging practice, which began in small-scale theater, has been experienced by millions in some of the world’s most prominent museums, galleries, opera houses, arena, and stadia. Her highly collaborative work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Devlin views the audience as a temporary society and invites public participation in communal works to encourage profound cognitive shifts. For her first monographic museum exhibition, Devlin has installed her 30-year archive across the third floor of the museum. An Atlas of Es Devlin features over 300 sketches, paintings, illuminated paper cuts, and projection-mapped rotating miniature sculptures that form the seeds of some of the most iconic, cultural congregations of music, poetry, art, and activism in recent times.
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March 24, 2023 - August 18, 2024, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Investigating Afrofuturist expression through art, music, activism and more, this exhibition explores and reveals Afrofuturism’s historic and poignant engagement with African American history and popular culture. From the enslaved looking to the cosmos for freedom to popular sci-fi stories inspiring Black astronauts, to the musical influence of Sun Ra, OutKast, Janelle Monae, P-Funk and more, this exhibition covers the broad and impactful spectrum of Afrofuturism. A highlight of the exhibition is the Black Panther hero costume worn by the late Chadwick Boseman. The Black Panther is the first superhero of African descent to appear in mainstream American comics, and the film itself is the first major cinematic production based on the character.
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October 20, 2023 - September 2, 2024, National Portrait Gallery
Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism presents some of the key people—scientists, politicians, activists, writers, and artists—whose work has influenced attitudes toward the environment in the United States from the late 19th century until today. The exhibition traces a history of the movement from turn-of-the-20th-century conservationism to mid-20th-century environmentalism and its backlash to present-day action on environmental justice, biodiversity, and climate. Drawing mainly from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, Forces of Nature: Voices that Shaped Environmentalism features more than 25 portraits of people who made an enduring impact on public perceptions of the natural world, including well-known figures Rachel Carson, George Washington Carver, Maya Lin, Henry David Thoreau, and Edward O. Wilson. The exhibition will bring together portraiture, visual biography and, when possible, the sitters’ own words to probe this important—and complicated—history.
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National Museum of the American Indian
This cafe features Native foods found throughout the Western Hemisphere, including the Northern Woodlands, South America, the Northwest Coast, Meso America and the Great Plains.
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National Museum of African American History and Culture
Sweet Home Café showcases the rich culture and history of the African American people with traditional, authentic offerings as well as present-day food traditions. * Access to the museum is limited and entry pass may be required
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Smithsonian Castle
An assortment of fresh baked goods, gelato and fresh fruit makes the Castle Café the perfect place for a quick snack. The café also offers a seasonal selection of sandwiches, salads, and soups.
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Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden
Located in the courtyard of the museum, Dolcezza offers locally sourced and handcrafted gelato, specialty espresso drinks, and gourmet pastries in a stunning contemporary setting designed by world-renowned artist Hiroshi Sugimoto.
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National Women's Hall of Fame and Museum, Seneca Falls, New York
July 12, 2024 - August 23, 2024
When American revolutionaries waged a war for independence they took a leap of faith that sent ripple effects across generations. They embraced a radical idea of establishing a government that entrusted the power of the nation not in a monarchy, but in its citizens. That great leap sparked questions that continue to impact Americans: who has the right to vote, what are the freedoms and responsibilities of citizens, and whose voices will be heard? Voices and Votes: Democracy in America will be a springboard for discussions about those very questions and how they are reflected in local stories.
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National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
July 13, 2024 - October 13, 2024
In 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a Harlem postman, began publishing a guide for African American travelers modeled after a similar publication for Jewish travelers. The Green Book, as it was known, was an instant success providing black travelers of the era with information on hotels, restaurants, service stations, and other facilities where they would be welcomed. In the era of Jim Crow and "sundown towns," this knowledge was not just helpful--it could be lifesaving. The Green Book ceased publication in 1967, and the guidebook that for years had offered "travel without embarrassment" was lost to history. The Smithsonian Institution is bringing this story to life with the exhibition, featuring an immersive look at the harsh reality of travel for blacks in mid-century America and the vibrant parallel world of African American-friendly businesses that supported this travel.
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Overland Trail Museum, Sterling, Coloradoh
August 5, 2024 - September 14, 2024
In 1900, about 40% of Americans lived in rural areas, By 2010, less than 18% of the U.S. population lived in rural areas. In just over a century, massive economic and social changes moved millions of Americans into urban areas. Yet, only 10% of the U.S. landmass is considered urban. Crossroads: Change in Rural America offers small towns a chance to look at their own paths to highlight the changes that affected their fortunes over the past century. The exhibition will prompt discussions about what happened when America’s rural population became a minority of the country’s population and the ripple effects that occurred.
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Discovery Center of Springfield, Springfield, Missouri
August 10, 2024 - August 10, 2026
The Moon is not the same place as when astronauts last stepped foot on it. A New Moon Rises features amazing, large-scale, high-resolution photographs of the lunar surface taken between 2009 and 2015 by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC). These images provide unique visual data to help answer our questions about the Moon's formation, its continuing geological evolution, and its relationship to Earth and the solar system. A New Moon Rises will include over 50 photographs, three videos, one interactive, and files to produce seven additional images, five 3-D models of craters, labels and environmental wall vinyl.
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