Past Exhibitions

Currier Farm, Danby, VT. Photograph © Peter Vanderwarker, 2013, courtesy The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley

Photographs document major public and private commissions by one of the most influential Modernist landscape architects of the 20th century.

PA and PE, 1990. Peter Alexander. Copyright Peter Alexander.

Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990

This traveling exhibition traces the transformation of Los Angeles into an internationally recognized destination with its own design vocabulary, canonic landmarks, and coveted way of life.

Mini Golf

This summer installation features two nine-hole indoor mini golf courses designed and built by Washington-area architects, landscape architects, and contractors.

Gloria Marshall Elementary School, Spring, Texas. Architect: SHW Group. Photo by Luis Ayala.

Green Schools

This exhibition explores trends in green design and the growing array of resources available to our next generation of healthy schools.

Main entrance hall of the Boston Public Library with elaborate mosaic tile covering the underside of the Guastavino vault (1889-1891). Photo by Michael Freeman.

Palaces for the People

This exhibition presents the accomplishments of the R. Guastavino family, Spanish immigrants whose patented tile vaulting technique created awe-inspiring spaces across the country.

The Washington Monument. Signal Corps, United States Army, ca. 1931. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.

Washington: Symbol and City

This exhibition reveals the inherent tensions between the demands of a working seat of government and the desire for a national symbol in the architecture of the nation’s capital.

Andrew Moore, Shelter, Engine Works, Detroit
Dry Dock Company Complex, Rivertown neighborhood, 2008, digital chromogenic print scanned from film negative, 45.5 x 36 in., Collection of Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell

Detroit Disassembled

The tragedy of Detroit is revealed in thirty haunting, monumentally-scaled photographs depicting windowless hotels, barren factories, collapsing churches, and city blocks reclaimed by prairie grass.

Detroit Is No Dry Bones

Photographs taken over 25 years document Detroit’s precipitous decline and how the city’s residents have survived.

Three façades of this LEED® Gold office building feature a 20-foot-cantilever and clear glass curtain wall. 1101 New York Avenue NW, Washington, D.C., 2007. Courtesy Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates.

Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment

Explore the work of this celebrated, third-generation modernist architect whose urban oases, corporate campuses, and megastructures reflect the spirit of the post-industrial age.

Unbuilt Washington

Unbuilt Washington features unrealized proposals for noteworthy architectural and urban design projects in Washington, D.C., and its environs from the 1790s to the present.

Drinking deer, north wall, Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis, 1958; St. Louis, Missouri. Design by Hildreth Meière. Photograph ©2009, Hildreth Meière Dunn.

Walls Speak: The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meière

Meière designed some of the most memorable murals and mosaics of the Art Deco period. Sketches, painted studies, and scale models bring her creative process to life.

Assembly Line in GM Exhibit, Century of Progress Exposition, Chicago, 1933. Courtesy Albert Kahn Family of Companies.

Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s

This exhibition showcased the modernist spectacles of architecture and design that nearly 100 million Americans witnessed at six world’s fairs held in the U.S. between 1933 and 1940.

Palladio and His Legacy

This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see some of the most important drawings in the world of architecture—31, 16th-century works by Italian Renaissance master Andrea Palladio.

LEGO® Architecture: Towering Ambition

Fifteen buildings from around the world are rendered in LEGO® bricks by Adam Reed Tucker.

An early meeting of the Commission of Fine Arts, c. 1912–1916. Seated L-R: Charles Moore; Pierce Anderson; Edwin H. Blashfield; Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.; Cass Gilbert; Daniel Chester French; Thomas Hastings; and Col. W. W. Harts (secretary). Photo by Harris & Ewing, Courtesy U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.

A Century of Design

Discover how this federal agency has shaped Washington, D.C., from memorials that define our national identity to public parks that enhance our city.

Drawing Toward Home: Designs for Domestic Architecture from Historic New England

Original works from the drawing collections of Historic New England span two centuries and depict changing residential styles and design trends.

House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage

This exhibition traces the unique relationship between parked cars and the built environment and encourages visitors to see these familiar structures in a new way.

Cityscapes Revealed: Highlights from the Collection

This collection highlights the building materials, architectural styles, and construction practices that defined urban America from the late-19th to the first half of the 20th centuries .