Cultural Tourism DC Calendar

When caravans transported commodities to the Mediterranean world and Indian subcontinent, cities along trade routes like Timna (in today’s Yemen) became known for artistic production. Fine alabaster figures, impressive metal work, and funerary busts became hallmark’s of Yemen’s ancient cultural traditions. Long-distance trade with the Greeks, Romans, and Persians introduced artistic and cultural traditions to ancient Arabia. A Glimpse of Ancient Yemen highlights a selection of objects excavated from the region by the pioneer archaeologist Wendell Phillips and his team in 1950 and 1951. See this exhibit on display at the Freer|Sackler until August 2019.

Today’s culture makes it easy for American women to engage in the world around them, thanks to advances in both women’s rights and technology. But between 1820 and 1920, many women chose to respond to current events and trends creatively, through one of their prescribed activities: needlework. Quilts allowed women to engage in the world while conforming to their era’s gender roles, which restricted middle-class women to the private, domestic sphere. This exhibition will present quilts that reflect their makers’ interest in their world.

Open Monday – Friday 8:30 am – 4 pm and Saturday 9 am – 5 pm.

Questions? Contact Museum staff at 202.879.3241 or museum@dar.org

We are proud to offer our newest, affordable sightseeing option – AUDIO TOURS.  Can’t make one of our guided tours?  Well, we have recorded some of our best tour guides giving their tours and put them on a GPS enabled app.  We’ve also included downloadable PDF maps of each walk, so that you don’t need to have GPS maps running with the app (save your battery).

1. Download our free app on (iTunes) or (Android)
2. Download any audio tour (Free – $1.99/each)
3. Enjoy the tour 

Even if you don’t download any tours, you will still have access to valuable information on sightseeing, eating and playing in the Washington, D.C.

Available Tours:

• Arlington National Cemetery
• Historic Georgetown
• Georgetown University

By the late 1960s, the United States was in pitched conflict both in Vietnam, against a foreign power, and at home—between Americans for and against the war, for and against the status quo. Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965–1975 presents art created amid this turmoil, spanning the period from President Lyndon B. Johnson’s fateful decision to deploy U.S. ground troops to South Vietnam in 1965 to the fall of Sài Gòn ten years later.

Artists Respond is the most comprehensive exhibition to examine the contemporary impact of the Vietnam War on American art. The exhibition is unprecedented in its historical scale and depth. It brings together nearly 100 works by fifty-eight of the most visionary and provocative artists of the period. Galvanized by the moral urgency of the Vietnam War, these artists reimagined the goals and uses of art, affecting developments in multiple movements and media: painting, sculpture, printmaking, performance, installation, documentary art, and conceptualism.

MARCH 15, 2019–AUGUST 18, 2019

Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and F Streets, NW)

Public gardens across America are engaging, inviting, and dynamic. Gardens are living creations, as they display seasonal changes along with a constant ebb and flow. This exhibit celebrates American gardens created or renovated within the last five years. These gardens showcase new plant collections, create spaces for people to connect with nature, and foster sustainability. Come explore what’s new in public gardens!

There are many other bus tours currently running. Be sure to read our comparison post on Washington, D.C. bus tours to help you navigate all the different bus tour options available to you, from open-top double-deckers to small group sprinter vans, from day trips to night tours. We cover it all and provide you with the insight necessary to choose what is best for you.

Norman Rockwell’s masterpieces make their way to Washington as part of a major international traveling exhibition on the Four Freedoms famously outlined by Franklin D. Roosevelt: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  In Enduring Ideals, Rockwell’s iconic paintings and works by other artists capture expressions of freedom from World War II to today.

February  13–April  29,  2019

Movie theaters are where our culture’s dreams and desires have been projected since the arrival of nickelodeons, providing an enchanting portal into a world where moviegoers could escape their everyday lives. Yet many historic theaters have not escaped the impact of social and technological change, nor the abandonment that has diminished our aging cities. Baltimore, thriving at the dawn of the cinema age, has been home to more than 240 theaters since its first Nickelodeon opened in 1905. Only a handful still function as theaters, but many survive in some form—ghosts on the gritty main streets of Charm City.

NOVEMBER 17, 2018 – OCTOBER 14, 2019

TREEmendous Juried Exhibition
Juror Carole Ottesen, writer, photographer and illustrator specializing in garden subjects, chose the work of 98 artists for an exhibition that focuses on the beauty of trees. Co-sponsored by the Capitol Hill Art League.

Collaborators: Dana Ellyn & Matt Sesow
This exhibition features recent work from both Dana and Matt, as well as some of their collaborative works.

Hill Center Galleries has two concurrent exhibitions running through April 28, 2019.

Gallery Hours:
Monday-Thursday: 8 a.m.-7 p.m.
Fridays: 8 a.m.-6 p.m.
Saturdays: 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Sundays: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Occasional closings for special events—please call (202) 549-4172 for confirmation of open hours on a particular day

The Embassy of Japan presents the exhibit IndigoThreads: Weaving Japanese Craftsmanship & American Heritage, an exhibition exploring the history of indigo dyed fabric and garments in Japan. Traditional Japanese craftsmanship has helped resurrect the classic American blue jean.

MAR 25 – JUNE 28, 2019

Explore headline-making FBI cases and learn how the bureau is fighting terrorism and cybercrime in this special update to one of the Newseum’s most popular exhibits.

From the Boston Marathon bombing to the Internet’s sinister Silk Road, go behind the scenes with the FBI to explore how crime and crime-fighting have evolved in the post-9/11 age. As the nation’s top crime-fighting force embarks on its second century, the exhibit will explore how the FBI detects and disrupts terrorists both at home and abroad, and thwarts powerful cyber criminals who steal data and money.

On display September 7, 2018 — July 7, 2019

John Lennon’s boyhood stamp album—including 565 stamps on more than 150 pages is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum. The exhibition coincides with the U.S. Postal Service’s issuance of the John Lennon Forever stamp, honoring the legendary singer and songwriter. The stamp is part of the USPS’ Music Icons series.

Lennon’s older cousin, Stanley Parkes, inspired the future Beatle’s interest in stamp collecting and gave him the album. Lennon rubbed out Parkes’s name and address on the album’s flyleaf, replacing it with his own signature and the address at Mendips, the home he shared with his aunt Mary (“Mimi”) Smith and her husband George. Already a budding artist, Lennon sketched beards and mustaches in blue ink of the likenesses of Queen Victoria and King George VI on the album’s title page.

Mark Bradford’s new work at the Hirshhorn spans roughly 400 linear feet inside the cutting-edge Smithsonian museum. Pickett’s Charge is a series of eight abstract paintings that depict the final charge of the Battle of Gettysburg, commonly noted as the most important battle of the Civil War. The result is a thought-provoking rumination on how we interpret history and the complexities of war. Bradford’s installation will also suggest issues faced by the American people today.

10 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. | Free admission

The Old Korean Legation is the cradle of Korea-U.S. friendship. In 1889, Korea (then Joseon) established her first diplomatic mission in the U.S. at Logan Circle, Washington, DC, but lost ownership of the legation building in 1910. 102 years later, Korea repurchased the building in 2012; restored it to its original 19th century beauty; and opened it to the public as the Old Korean Legation Museum in May 2018.

ㅇ Open from 10:00 to 17:00
ㅇ Closed on Mondays
ㅇ Free Admission / Free Tour (Both Group and Individual visits)
ㅇ Reservations available at website
ㅇ Tel : (202) 844 – 3330
ㅇ Email : info@oldkoreanlegation.org

As part of a series of installations celebrating its golden anniversary, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery will present “One Year: 1968, An American Odyssey,” a one-room exhibition that looks back at an extraordinarily important and memorable time in American history. The show relies on some thirty portraits to tell the story of 1968, the year when the Vietnam War reached a turning point, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, and television sets displayed everything from the Olympic Games to the first manned orbit of the moon. Memorably, it was also the year that the Portrait Gallery first opened its doors. The subjects featured in the exhibition continue to resonate in our collective memory. Representations of Martin Luther King Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard M. Nixon will share the walls with portraits of cultural figures such as Peggy Fleming, Arthur Ashe, Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Depictions of other significant personalities, notably the Apollo 8 astronauts, will round out the exhibition.

June 29, 2018 – May 19, 2019

Pioneering feminist artist Yun Suknam (born 1939) uses portraiture to gain insights into the lives of women, past and present. A wood assemblage portrait of her mother is the centerpiece of this exhibition, which includes portraits of American artists, such as Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, Marisol, Kiki Smith and Nancy Spero. This presentation focuses on shared themes and artistic approaches that have activated women artists from different parts of the globe. Robyn Asleson, the National Portrait Gallery’s associate curator of prints, drawings and media arts, is the curator of this exhibition. “Portraits of the World: Korea” is the second exhibition in a series dedicated to highlighting the global context of American portraiture and follows the series’ inaugural focus on Switzerland.

On display until May 27, 2019

In addition to its permanent exhibition on the nation’s airmail service, the Postal Museum has a temporary exhibition, Postmen of the Skies.

In 1918 the first regularly scheduled airmail service began operations. Planes carried mail between Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City. The nation greeted the new service with enthusiasm. Crowds surrounded airfields in all three cities, eager to watch history in action. The nation became more enamored with their postal pilots as the service grew. By September 8, 1920 mail was flying between New York and San Francisco.

The Post Office operated the service until 1927, having begun in 1925 to turn over some routes to private airlines. The new airlines built their businesses on the postal routes, infrastructure and pilots. Over the next decade, airmail contracts financed the fledgling airlines, serving to help build the nation’s commercial aviation industry.