19th century The Renwick Gallery building was originally built to be
Washington, D.C.'s first
art museum and to house
William Wilson Corcoran's collection of
American and European art. The building was designed by
James Renwick Jr. and completed in 1874. The gallery is located at 1661
Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Renwick designed it after the Louvre's
Tuileries addition. At the time of its construction, it was known as "the American
Louvre". The building was near completion when the
Civil War broke out and was seized by the U.S. Army in August 1861 as a temporary military warehouse for the records and uniforms for the Quarter Master General's Corps. In 1864, General
Montgomery C. Meigs converted the building into his headquarters office. Starting in 1899, the building housed the federal
Court of Claims. In 1965, President
Lyndon Johnson signed an executive order transferring the Renwick building to the
Smithsonian Institution for use as a "
gallery of
arts,
craft and
design." it opened in 1972 as the home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's contemporary craft program. The museum reopened on November 13, 2015 with an exhibition entitled Wonder featuring site-specific installation by nine artists. The architectural renovation was led by Westlake Reed Leskosky, a
Cleveland, Ohio–based architecture and engineering firm and construction was overseen by Consigli Construction Co. of
Milford, Massachusetts. The four other firms which competed for the renovation job and made it to the final round but were not selected were
Marlon Blackwell Architect,
Studio Odile Decq,
Vinci Hamp Architects, and
Westlake Reed Leskosky (now
DLR Group).
Reopening The Renwick Gallery opened its doors after renovation on Friday, November 13, 2015. Admission is free. The gallery is open daily from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The first-floor gallery typically featured temporary exhibits that rotated about twice a year. One commentator said, the crafts displayed "are high art, not everyday objects."
Exhibitions , viewed in 2015 , viewed in 2016 viewing a sculpture in 2016 In 2012, the Renwick Gallery hosted an exhibition called "40 Under 40: Craft Futures", which featured 40 artists in "boundary-pushing interpretations of glass, fiber, ceramic, wood and other materials challenge the traditional process-oriented notion of the craft medium by incorporating performance, interactivity and politics." The gallery's visitors have almost doubled due to the popularity of the "Wonder" exhibition. In November 2015, "Wonder" opened in celebration of the completion of a two-year renovation of the Renwick Gallery. The exhibition featured nine major contemporary artists invited to install site-specific works on the theme of wonder in the nine exhibition spaces of the gallery. The artists chosen were
Jennifer Angus,
Chakaia Booker,
Gabriel Dawe,
Tara Donovan, Patrick Dougherty,
Janet Echelman, John Grade,
Maya Lin, and
Leo Villareal. The artists were given freedom to create their installations. Angus' piece, "In the Midnight Garden," featured over 5,000 bugs – beetles, moths, and cicadas Booker's "Anonymous Donor" was made up of old tires and stainless steel. Dawe's "Plexus A1" weaved a rainbow into the middle of one of the Renwick's rooms. Donovan made her installation out of thousands of index cards. Echelman based her piece off of images from the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that showed the impact of waves during the
2011 Japan tsunami. and the Renwick has been tagged over 20,000 times on
Instagram by users. It was criticized for being inconsistent with the Renwick's commitment to American craft. The Renwick Craft Invitational is a biennial assessment of contemporary fine craft. The 2016 exhibition featured works by Steven Young Lee,
Kristen Morgin,
Jennifer Trask, and Norwood Viviano.
Disrupting Craft: Renwick Invitational 2018 featured works by
Tanya Aguiñiga,
Sharif Bey, Dustin Farnsworth, and
Stephanie Syjuco. Since 2011, the Renwick has hosted a quarterly "Handi-hour," a crafting-themed happy hour event, inspired by the DIY movement. In addition to craft activities for patrons, the 21+ event features craft beers selected by Greg Engert of the ChurchKey restaurant and pub in Washington, D.C. In 2019, the Renwick hosted an
augmented reality exhibition by
glass artist Ginny Ruffner and digital collaborator Grant Kirkpatrick titled
Reforestation of the Imagination. In 2023, the tenth Renwick Invitational,
Sharing Honors and Burdens featured
Native American artists:
Joe Feddersen,
Erica Lord,
Geo Soctomah Neptune,
Maggie Thompson,
Lily Hope, and
Ursala Hudson. ==Notable artists in the collection==