ART EXHIBITIONS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. this SPRING
February 23, 2026
Rik Freeman: Wade in the Waters
Through February 19, 2026, at Phillips @ THE ARC, an extension of The Phillips Collection.
Pioneering D.C. artist Rik Freeman explores waterways as conduits of memory, migration, and cultural continuity across the African diaspora. Moving from the beaches of Bahia to the Anacostia River, the exhibition situates landscape as a living archive shaped by history and movement.
Out of Many: Reframing an American Art Collection
Through February 15, 2026, at The Phillips Collection.
Bringing together both canonical and underrecognized artists, this wide-ranging presentation reconsiders American art as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary. Landscape emerges as a recurring throughline, revealing how artists have pictured place, identity, and belonging from the early twentieth century to today.
John Akomfrah: Five Murmurations
Ongoing at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.
This immersive multi-channel film by John Akomfrah unfolds as a visual essay on climate, migration, and collective memory. Sweeping natural imagery and charged historical references position landscape as both witness and participant in contemporary global crises.
Nick Cave: Mammoth
On view in 2026 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Nick Cave transforms the gallery into a dense, materially saturated environment that blurs the boundary between installation and imagined terrain. While not a traditional landscape exhibition, the work’s immersive spatial logic and theatrical scale engage the body in ways analogous to environmental experience.
Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe
Through January 2027 at the National Museum of the American Indian.
The first major retrospective of Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk) artist Truman Lowe foregrounds rivers, streams, and waterfalls through elegantly spare sculptures made of willow branches and organic materials. Lowe’s practice approaches landscape as a site of cultural memory, ecological knowledge, and spiritual relation to place.