WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art will present the exhibition “James McNeill Whistler,” uniting the London-based Tate Britain’s major retrospective on the American artist with unique Whistler works held exclusively at the Smithsonian museum. Open Friday, Feb. 12, 2027, to Sunday, July 11, 2027, the exhibition offers an unprecedented look at the entire range of work of one of the most innovative and controversial artists of the 19th century. It presents these insights into James McNeill Whistler’s life, art and global inspirations at the museum founded by his friend and patron, Charles Lang Freer.
“James McNeill Whistler” is the first major international retrospective on the artist in 30 years and brings together works from 20 major collections across Europe and the U.S., including the National Gallery of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the White House. The National Museum of Asian Art is the travelling exhibition’s only stop in the U.S., where it will be installed alongside the museum’s expansive collection of Whistler’s works. Objects from the museum’s Japanese and Chinese collections will appear throughout the galleries to contextualize the transformative influence of East Asian art on Whistler’s artwork.
The exhibition also coincides with the museum’s launch of a new immersive virtual-reality (VR) experience of Whistler’s only surviving intact interior, the Peacock Room, which turns 150 years old in 2027. At the museum, audiences can complement their viewing of “James McNeill Whistler” with a visit to the Peacock Room alongside the newly completed interactive VR experience, allowing a close look at the room’s dramatic history.
“Our museum not only holds the largest and most diverse Whistler collection in America, but it is also uniquely qualified to present Whistler’s global perspective, including how Asian art inspired and shaped the artist’s practices,” said Chase F. Robinson, director of the National Museum of Asian Art. “By bringing the Tate’s monumental exhibition here, we reflect on a ‘Whistler moment’ for audiences to discover the full legacy of this singular artist’s life and work.”
“This exhibition offers audiences the rare opportunity to see how Whistler altered the course of modern art through bold experimentation across all media,” said Diana Greenwold, the museum’s associate director for curatorial affairs, the Lunder Curator of American Art and the exhibition’s in-house curator. “So much of what we consider modern, from abstracted landscapes to white-cube gallery installations, stems from Whistler’s ideas and innovations.”
Over 100 paintings, prints, watercolors and pastels reveal Whistler’s many dimensions—his boldness, humor and insistence on pushing boundaries. Visitors can explore how Whistler changed modern art and examine his role as an American ex-patriot and agile navigator of different social classes. The exhibition highlights the influence of accomplished women in his life, including his wife, Beatrice Whistler.
The exhibition also debuts insights about techniques through the “Whistler’s Finish” conservation research project. This research has uncovered the artist’s radical methods, including how he experimented with paint in his “Nocturnes”—works that foregrounded modern abstraction.
The galleries will showcase some of Whistler’s most groundbreaking works, such as his “Nocturnes” and “Symphony in White: The White Girl,” as well as rarely seen paintings, early sketches and rare etchings from over 1,300 Whistler objects in the museum’s collection. “James McNeill Whistler” also explores the artist’s free-ranging technique by showing an assortment of his tools, such as paintbrushes and original copper-etching plates that Freer collected. Because of Freer’s bequest and its restrictions, these Whistler works can only be viewed on location.
