Progress

Between August 21, 2025 and October 12, 2025, hundreds of volunteers took nearly 50,000 photographs to document the public exhibits currently on display at Smithsonian Institutions. Volunteer captains worked nights and weekends and combed over maps and explored through exhibits they had never seen before to produce a full and complete external record of the displays.

On October 12, 2025, most of the Smithsonian museums closed their doors because of the government shutdown, but our incredible volunteers had already captured everything they could access.

Below is an exhaustive list of the exhibits captured by these amazing citizen historians in that 7 week period.

Anacostia Community Museum ✅
Arts and Industries Building - N/A, currently closed
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum - N/A, closed for exhibit installation until 11/20/25
National Museum of Asian Art - Freer Gallery of Art ✅
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden ✅
National Air and Space Museum ✅
National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center ✅
National Museum of African American History and Culture ✅
National Museum of African Art ✅
National Museum of American History ✅
National Museum of Asian Art – Arthur M. Sackler Gallery ✅
National Museum of Natural History ✅
National Museum of the American Indian ✅
National Museum of the American Indian (New York) ✅
National Portrait Gallery ✅
National Postal Museum ✅
National Zoological Park ✅
Renwick Gallery ✅
Smithsonian American Art Museum ✅
Smithsonian Gardens ✅
Smithsonian Institution Building, The Castle - N/A, currently closed
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ✅

Anacostia Community Museum

Anacostia Community Museum Gardens and External Photos ✅
Floor 1
1. DC Women Speak ✅
2. Buttons and Pins ✅
3. Anacostia River Exhibit ✅
4. A Bold and Beautiful Vision ✅

Arts and Industries Building

N/A, currently closed

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

N/A, closed for exhibit installation until 11/20/25

National Museum of Asian Art - Freer Gallery of Art

Ground Floor - *S
1. America ✅
2. Japan ✅
3. Peacock Room ✅
4. China ✅
  1. Room 19 ✅
  2. Room 18 ✅
  3. Room 17 ✅
  4. Room 16 ✅
  5. Room 15 ✅
  6. Room 13 ✅
  7. Hallway ✅
5. Courtyard (files located in Smithsonian Gardens) ✅
6. Islamic World ✅
7. Indian Subcontinent ✅
  1. Overview photos Rooms #1 & 2 ✅
  2. Freer Gallery Room #2 ✅
  3. Freer Gallery Room #1 ✅
8. Korea ✅
Ground Floor - *G
1. Meyer Auditorium (not open to public)
2. Conference Room (not open to public)

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Main Level ✅
1. Plaza ✅
Lower Level ✅
1. Banksy & Basquiat ✅
2. Belief & Doubt ✅
3. Hallway to ARTLAB+ ✅
Second Level ✅
1. Love, Queen Exhibit ✅
2. Revolutions Exhibit, Sculptures and Glass Cases ✅
3. Revolutions Exhibit, Entry by Escalator, Modern Beginnings, Abstraction & Construction, up to Emergency Exit ✅
4. Revolutions Exhibit, Vital Forms (From Emergency exit up to Local Visions) ✅
5. Revolutions Exhibit, from Local Visions up to Laurie Anderson Exhibit ✅
6. Laurie Anderson exhibit and Aftershocks Exhibit ✅
7. Revolutions Exhibit, from end of Aftershocks Exhibit up to Gestures & Myths and Emergency Exit ✅
8. Revolutions Exhibit, from Gestures & Myths and emergency exit through end of exhibit at escalator ✅
Third Level ✅
1. Mark Bradford, Pickett’s Charge ✅

National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center

Floor 1 ✅
1. Boeing Aviation Hangar ✅
  1. WWII German ✅
  2. WWII Aviation (not German) ✅
  3. Pre-1920 Aviation ✅
  4. Modern Military Aviation ✅
  5. Korea and Vietnam ✅
  6. Interwar Military Aviation ✅
  7. Cold War Aviation ✅
2. Left-Hand Hangar ✅
  1. Vertical Flight ✅
  2. Ultralight ✅
  3. General Aviation ✅
  4. Commercial Aviation ✅
  5. Business Aviation ✅
  6. Acrobatic Flight ✅
  7. Sport Aviation ✅
3. James S. Mcdonnel Space Hangar ✅
  1. Space Science ✅
  2. Rockets and Missiles ✅
  3. Human Spaceflight ✅
  4. Applications Satellites ✅

National Museum of African American History and Culture

Concourse 3 – Slavery and Freedom 1400 - 1877 ✅
1. The Transatlantic Slave Trade ✅
2. Enslaving Colonial North America ✅
3. The Revolutionary War ✅
4. The Paradox of Liberty ✅
5. King Cotton ✅
6. Domestic Slave Trade ✅
7. Making A Way ✅
8. Life and Work + Slavery Shapes America ✅
9. Slave Cabin + Harriet Tubman Artifacts + Reflection Booth ✅
10. Coming of War / Civil War ✅
11. Emancipation ✅
12. Slavery & Freedom Entrance Area (off elevator) ✅
13. The Middle Passage (Sao José Artifacts) ✅
Concourse 2 – Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom: The Era of Segregation 1876 - 1968 ✅
1. Jones Hall Sims House ✅
2. The Jim Crow Era ✅
3. The Great Migration ✅
4. The Modern Civil Rights Movement ✅
5. Emmett Till Memorial ✅
6. Segregated Railcar ✅
7. Interactive Lunch Counter ✅
8. Tuskegee Airplane / Training of Tuskegee Airmen ✅
9. Guard Tower, Reflection booth, theater, other signage ✅
10. Reconstruction / Era of Segregation ✅
Concourse 1 – A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond ✅
1. Cities and Suburbs ✅
2. The Movement Marches On ✅
3. Events of ‘68 ✅
4. Decades ✅
5. Other Signage (Reflections, Theater) ✅
Concourse ✅
1. A Century in the Making ✅
2. Other Signage (theater, contemplative court, special exh, donor wall, etc.) ✅
3. Sweet Home Cafe Signage ✅
Floor 1 – Heritage Hall ✅
1. Other Signage (Welcome Desk and Surrounding Areas, Smith Pavilion, Store) ✅
2. Artworks ✅
Floor 2 – Explore More ✅
1. Other Signage (family center, classrooms, Center for media arts) ✅
2. Spirit in the Dark Exhibition ✅
3. Interactive Gallery ✅
Floor 3 - Community Galleries ✅
1. Making A Way Out of No Way ✅
2. Double Victory: The African American Military Experience ✅
3. The Power of Place ✅
4. Sports: Leveling the Playing Field ✅
5. Other Signage (theater, overlooks) ✅
6. Divine Nine Exhibit ✅
7. Forces for Change ✅
Floor 4 – Culture Galleries ✅
1. Visual Art and the American Experience ✅
2. Cultural Expressions ✅
3. Musical Crossroads ✅
4. Taking the Stage ✅
5. Other Signage ✅

National Museum of African Art

Street Level
1. Outside Exhibits and Signage ✅
2. The Pavilion ✅
Sublevel 1
1. Exhibition Gallery (closed, was African Mosaic, Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art coming in winter 2026)
2. 2- Exhibition Gallery (closed)
3. Museum Store ✅
4. Benin Bronzes ✅
5. Sylvia H. Williams Gallery (performance space, no displays)
6. Tdesaye Makonnen ✅
7. Exhibition Gallery (closed)
8. Mezzanine ✅
Sublevel 2
1. Visionary Viewpoints ✅
  1. Room A ✅
  2. Room B ✅
  3. Room C ✅
  4. Room D ✅
  5. Room E ✅
  6. Room F ✅
  7. Room G ✅
2. Workshop (closed)
3. Lecture Hall (closed)
Sublevel 3
1. Exhibition Gallery (closed)
2. Currents ✅
3. Exhibition Space (closed)
4. Exhibition Space (closed)
Stairwells and Hallways ✅

National Museum of American History

Exterior ✅
Lower Level ✅
1. Other Signage (Restaurant on Lower Level & Jazz Cafe 1st floor) ✅
Floor 1 ✅
1. American Enterprise ✅
2. Archives Center – Treasures & Trouble ✅
3. Smithsonian Libraries Gallery (area closed/no exhibit)
4. The Value of Money ✅
5. ¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States – closed July 2025
6. Really Big Money ✅
7. Sounding American Music ✅
8. We Belong Here ✅
9. Inventing America ✅
10. Lighting a Revolution ✅
11. Power Machinery ✅
12. America on the Move ✅
13. On the Water ✅
14. Food Exhibition ✅
15. Change Your Game ✅
16. Spark!Lab ✅
17. Wonderplace ✅
18. Object Project ✅
19. Center Hall Exhibits and Other Signs ✅
20. Always Ready - Fighting Fire ✅
21. Bicycles and Skateboards ✅
22. Duplicates ✅
23. Jazz/Big Band ✅
24. John Bull locomotive ✅
25. Molina Family Latino Gallery ✅
26. Other Artifacts ✅
27. Reinventing the Car - Preston Tucker ✅
28. The Doll’s House ✅
29. The Electronic World/My Computing Device ✅
30. Waterloo Boy Tractor ✅
31. Zen and the Open Road plus Robert Pirsig: Writer, Rider, Sailor ✅
Floor 2
1. Greensboro Lunch Counter - Changing Exhibition Gallery ✅
2. American Democracy ✅
3. Unity Square ✅
4. Many Voices, One Nation ✅
5. Within These Walls ✅
6. The Star-Spangled Banner (signs indicate photography banned in exhibit)
7. Changing Exhibition Gallery East 1 (unassigned b/c no exhibit)
8. Changing Exhibition Gallery East 2 (unassigned b/c no exhibit)
9. The Electric Dr. Franklin ✅
10. Rallying Against Racism ✅
11. Other Exhibits & Signage ✅
  1. 2nd Floor Entrance East Exhibit ✅
  2. 2nd Floor Entrance West Exhibit ✅
Floor 3
1. Carl Nassib ✅
2. America’s Listening ✅
3. Corazón y vida: Lowriding Culture (opened 9/26, documented 9/30) ✅
4. Changing Exhibition Gallery (unassigned b/c no exhibit)
5. Entertainment Nation ✅
6. The First Ladies ✅
7. The American Presidency ✅
8. The Price of Freedom ✅
  1. War of Independence ✅
  2. Expansion ✅
  3. Civil War ✅
  4. WWI ✅
  5. WWII ✅
  6. Cold War ✅
  7. Vietnam ✅
  8. New Roles ✅
  9. Medal of Honor ✅
  10. Entrance ✅
9. Giving in America ✅
10. Video Game exhibit ✅
Other exhibits & Signage ✅

National Museum of Asian Art

Sublevel 3 (S3) - Ripley Center ✅
1. Graphic Eloquence: Limited Edition Prints from The Smithsonian Associates Art Collectors Program ✅
2. Sixty Years of Wonder: Smithsonian Associates ✅
Sublevel 3 (S3) ✅
1. Gallery 29: Prehistoric Spirals: Earthenwares from Thailand ✅
2. Sublevel 2 (S2) ✅
3. Hands On with the Interactive Cosmic Buddha (interactive digital exhibit) ✅
Sublevel 1 (S1) ✅
1. Gallery 21: Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran ✅
2. Gallery 22: The Art of Knowing - Ancient Yemen - Striking Objects ✅
3. Gallery 25: Cut + Paste: Experimental Japanese Prints and Photographs ✅
4. Gallery 26: Connecting Stories, Tibetan Shrine Room ✅
5. Galleries 23, 24, 28: Korean Treasures (opens Nov. 8, 2025)
Ground (*G) ✅

National Museum of Natural History

Ground Floor ✅
1. Dazzling Diversity ✅
2. Other Signage ✅
3. Atrium Cafe ✅
4. Family Store ✅
5. Moai ✅
6. T.rex Skull ✅
7. Berns Quartz ✅
8. Totem Pole ✅
Floor 1 ✅
1. Mammals ✅
2. David H. Koch Hall of Fossils – Deep Time ✅
3. Human Origins ✅
4. art x climate ✅
5. Sant Ocean Hall ✅
6. Birds of DC ✅
7. African Voices ✅
  1. Kongo Crossroads ✅
  2. Market Crossroads ✅
  3. Working in Africa ✅
  4. Living in Africa ✅
  5. Wealth in Africa ✅
  6. Global Africa ✅
  7. Walk Through Time ✅
  8. African Voices - Orientation ✅
8. FossilLab ✅
9. Other Signage ✅
10. Ocean Terrace Café ✅
11. Dinos and More ✅
12. African Bush Elephant - Rotunda ✅
Floor 2 ✅
1. Hope Diamond ✅
2. Gems and Minerals ✅
3. Geology ✅
4. Lights Out: Recovering Our Night Sky ✅
5. NASA’s Earth Information Center ✅
6. Cellphone: Unseen Connections ✅
7. Mummies ✅
8. Bones ✅
9. Live Insect Zoo - Shut due to unexpected maintenance ✅
10. Live Butterfly Pavilion Shut due to unexpected maintenance ✅
Other Signage ✅
1. Gems and Minerals Store ✅
2. The Garden Lounge ✅

National Museum of the American Indian

Exterior and Floor 1 ✅
1. Potomac Atrium ✅
Floor 2 ✅
1. Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake Exhibition ✅
2. Sealaska Gallery ✅
3. Other Signage ✅
Floor 3 ✅
1. Americans Exhibition ✅
  1. Level 3 North Gallery ✅
  2. imagiNATIONS Activity Center ✅
  3. Window on Collections Exhibition ✅
Floor 4 ✅
1. Unbound: Narrative Art of the Great Plains Exhibition ✅
2. Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and the American Indian Nations Exhibition ✅
3. Other Signage ✅
4. Meeting Rooms ✅
5. Patrons Lounge ✅
6. Lelawi Theater ✅

National Museum of the American Indian (New York)

Lower Level – Closed during visit
1. Auditorium – Closed during visit
Floor 1
1. Diker Pavilion for Native Arts and Cultures ✅
2. Future imagiNATIONS Activity Center – Locked during visit
Floor 2 ✅
1. East Gallery – Closed for renovations
2. Photography Gallery ✅
3. South Gallery ✅
4. West Gallery ✅
5. Visitor Information ✅
Other Signage ✅

National Portrait Gallery

First Floor ✅
1. Special Exhibitions (West Part of Corridor South) ✅
2. Creative Content Center ✅
  1. Education Center (E151) ✅
  2. Explore! (E152) ✅
3. Out of Many: Portraits from 1600-1900 ✅
  1. Corridor East ✅
  2. Corridor South (east part) ✅
  3. Corridor North (east part) ✅
  4. Corridor Middle ✅
  5. Room E111 ✅
  6. Room E112 ✅
  7. Room E122 ✅
  8. Room E123 ✅
  9. Room E124 ✅
  10. Room E131 ✅
  11. Room E132 ✅
  12. Room E135 ✅
  13. Room E136 ✅
  14. Room E141 ✅
  15. Room E142 ✅
  16. Room E144 ✅
4. Recent Acquisitions (West part of Corridor North) ✅
5. Archives of American Art Gallery (SAAM/NPG) ✅
6. Sightlines (SAAM/NPG, located in SAAM folder) ✅
7. Landing NE (Grant) ✅
8. Room S132A (SAAM/NPG) ✅
9. Other Signage (SAAM/NPG) ✅
  1. Kogod Courtyard ✅
  2. Lobby (North) ✅
  3. Lobby (South) ✅
  4. Courtyard Café ✅
Second Floor ✅
1. America's Presidents ✅
  1. Room S240 and corridor ✅
  2. Presidents Pamphlet ✅
  3. Room W210 ✅
2. The Struggle for Justice ✅
3. Special Exhibitions (above the South Lobby; SAAM/NPG) ✅
4. Room S234 (SAAM/NPG) ✅
Third Floor ✅
1. Great Hall ✅
2. Twentieth-Century Americans ✅
  1. Room S321 ✅
  2. Room S322 ✅
  3. Room S342 ✅
3. Twenty-first Century Americans (Room S341) ✅
Third Floor Mezzanine ✅
1. Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Americans -- Closed during visit ✅
Exterior ✅

National Postal Museum

Floor 1 ✅
1. Systems at Work ✅
2. Moving the Mail ✅
3. Mail Call ✅
  1. Mail and Morale ✅
  2. In the Field ✅
  3. From Horseback to Helicopter ✅
  4. Christmas, 1918 ✅
4. Franklin Foyer ✅
5. Binding the Nation ✅
6. Behind the Badge ✅
7. Customers and Communities (closed)
8. Special Exhibition Gallery (closed)
Floor 2 ✅
1. World of Stamps ✅
2. Stamps Around the Globe ✅
3. National Stamp Salon ✅
4. Mail Marks History ✅
5. Gems of Philately ✅
6. Connect with U.S. Stamps ✅
7. Postmaster’s Gallery (closed)

National Zoological Park

Asia Trial ✅
Bird House ✅
Zoo In Your Backyard ✅
Elephant Trails ✅
American Trails ✅
Gibbon Ridge ✅
Lemur Island ✅
Claws and Paws Pathway ✅
Prairie Dogs ✅
Amazonia ✅
Giant Pandas ✅
Africa Trail (under renovation until 2026)
Przewalski’s Horse ✅
Small Mammal House ✅
Great Apes and O-Line ✅
Reptile Discovery Center ✅
Think Tank ✅
Great Cats ✅
Kids’ Farm ✅
Andean Bears ✅
Other Signs ✅

Renwick Gallery

Exterior ✅
First Floor ✅
1. Exhibition Gallery - Left Side ✅
2. Exhibition Gallery - Main Large Gallery ✅
3. Exhibition Gallery - Near Entrance ✅
4. Exhibition Gallery - Right Side ✅
5. Other Signage ✅
6. Palm Court ✅
Second Floor ✅
1. Bettie Rubenstein Grand Salon ✅
2. Exhibition Gallery - Bottom Right ✅
3. Exhibition Gallery - Bottom Left / Renwick 2nd floor SW gallery ✅
4. Exhibition Gallery - Left Side ✅
5. Exhibition Gallery - Right Side ✅
6. Media Room ✅
7. Octagon Room ✅

Renwick Gallery

Floor 1 ✅
1. Archives of American Art Gallery & Recent Acquisitions ✅
2. Experience America - 3 rooms ✅
3. Folk and Self-Taught Art - 3 rooms ✅
4. McMillan Education Center (limited access)
5. Other Signage - gift store, outside ✅
6. Special Exhibitions - Grandma Moses (Opening October 24)
7. Sightlines - Chinatown + Einstein Gallery ✅
  1. Works by Asian Artists Outside of Exhibit ✅
  2. Making Place (right-side) ✅
  3. Martial Arts I ✅
  4. Friendship Archway ✅
  5. Sightlines ✅
  6. Einstein Gallery ✅
  7. Chinatown Photos ✅
  8. Miss Chelove's Collage + BLM Mural ✅
Floor 2 ✅
1. Civil War, Folk Art, Shaker Furniture ✅
  1. Folk Art - E235 ✅
  2. Shaker Furniture - E241 ✅
  3. Civil War - E233 ✅
2. Corridor 2.1. - Early America ✅
3. Corridor 2.2 + Cay Gallery (closed)
4. Corridor 2.3 + Moran Landscape, Goldman Gallery ✅
5. Early America ✅
  1. S223 ✅
  2. S225 ✅
  3. S22 ✅
6. Gilded Age, Davidson Gallery - E211, E212 ✅
7. Impressionism - E222, E223, E224, E231, E232 ✅
8. Landscapes - Williams Gallery, E236, E242, E244 ✅
9. Modernism - N244, N246 ✅
10. N222, N224, N226, N232 (closed)
11. Southwestern Art - N243, N245 ✅
12. The Early Republic (closed)
Floor 3 ✅
1. Luce Foundation Center ✅
2. The Automobile and American Art ✅
3. Special Exhibitions (Photos difficult, web archive used instead)
4. Modern and Contemporary Art ✅
  1. M5 ✅
  2. M4 ✅
  3. M3 ✅
  4. M2 ✅
  5. M1 ✅
    1. Post-WWII Abstraction ✅
    2. Introduction, Miscellaneous, and Gallery Panoramas ✅
    3. In Full Color: Multiculturalism and Art ✅
    4. DC Color Abstraction ✅
    5. Breaking the Mold: The Impact of Feminism ✅
  6. Video Art (closed)
Floor 3 Mezzanine
1. Luce Foundation Center ✅
  1. M14 4th Fl ✅
  2. M10 ✅
Floor 4
1. Luce Foundation Center (no photos allowed)

Smithsonian Gardens

Common Ground: Our American Garden✅
Enid A. Haupt Garden ✅
Freer Gallery of Art Courtyard Garden ✅
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden – closed on 10/2, partial photos only ✅
Kathrine Dulin Folger Rose Garden ✅
Mary Livingston Ripley Garden (No text in garden to photograph)
National Air and Space Museum landscape – Need to confirm if volunteers have it
Native landscape at the National Museum of the American Indian ✅
Pollinator Garden (formerly the Butterfly Habitat Garden) ✅
Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard in the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture ✅
Urban Bird Habitat ✅
NMAH Victory Garden (closed, empty) ✅

Smithsonian Institution Building, The Castle

N/A, currently closed

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Floor 4 – Nazi Assault—1933 to 1939 ✅
Floor 3 – The "Final Solution"—1940 to 1945 ✅
Floor 2 – Last Chapter ✅
Floor 1 – Main (Called 2 on sign on stairs) ✅
Lower Level ✅
Other Signage/Cafe ✅