Renwick Gallery, Art museum in Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.
The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, housed in a red-brick building with light stone trim, a steep grey mansard roof and a central rounded dome. Its facade has symmetrical rows of arched windows, a stone band inscribed "DEDICATED TO ART" above the entrance, and statues in niches between the upper windows. James Renwick Jr. designed it after the Tuileries addition of the Louvre.
William Wilson Corcoran commissioned architect James Renwick Jr. to design the building in the 1850s as a home for his art collection. The structure later gained National Historic Landmark status and is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The collection showcases American artists working with ceramics, glass, metal, wood, and fiber, blending traditional craft techniques with contemporary ideas. Visitors can see how materials transform into functional or purely expressive works that bridge everyday use and fine art.
The museum opens daily from 10 AM to 5:30 PM with free admission for all visitors. The accessible entrance is located on 17th Street, where information about current exhibitions is also available.
The 2015 reopening exhibition "Wonder" ran for eight months and drew 732,000 visitors, with the gallery's Instagram followers tagging it more than 20,000 times. Jennifer Angus covered a pink room with over 5,000 beetles, moths and cicadas for her piece "In the Midnight Garden".
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