Past Exhibitions

IN THE SPIRIT is an annual celebration of diverse Native arts and culture. It includes a juried art exhibition at the Washington State History Museum with a wide range of selected works on view during July and August.

Hop aboard for a journey through the history of railroad travel in Washington State! This exhibition of rail travel posters, schedules, tickets, and train-related objects provides a glimpse of how and why passengers traveled. Visit the History Museum for this new exhibition, and while you're here, see the state's largest model train layout on public view, too!

The History Museum lights up its towering front archways in a blast of colored light as part of the Tacoma Light Trail. The diversity of colors echoes the Historical Society's ongoing work to examine and highlight the history of all Washingtonians. The Tacoma Light Trail brings light art downtown. A Sound Trail pairs music and poetry with each light location. It’s FREE, and walkable or partially drivable every night. The goal: To uplift and unify our community at a dark time of year.

The Votes for Women: 100 Years and Counting is an intriguing look at the history of the women’s suffrage movement. Who were the Washington women that fought for voting rights? How did they sway national progress toward the 19th Amendment?

This exhibit presents a series of original tinted lithographs illuminating the natural features of the Cascade Range and its transecting Columbia River, as recorded by two exploration survey parties seeking viable transcontinental railroad routes prior to the Civil War.

See a pair of historic bicycles and other cycling material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wheeled out from the Historical Society’s collections.

These collages celebrate historic and current women changemakers in Washington, while also highlighting Washington State's role in the national suffrage movement.

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IN THE SPIRIT is an annual celebration of diverse Indigenous arts and culture featuring an exhibition of contemporary art, a virtual arts market, gallery talks, conversations with artists, music, dance and more.

Mystery remains for many shipwrecks about what happened to a ship or why it went down.

David Bacon's photographs show the reality of people working in fields in central and western Washington, and in narrative text panels their voices tell the story of their struggle for justice.

Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth. presents the history of more than two dozen known and unknown leaders, past and present, illuminating their change-making contributions through bold, contemporary visual art, quotes, poetry, photographs and vibrant stories.

HORIZON is an exhibition comprised of some 30 landscapes from the Washington State Historical Society’s collection. These paintings, hung together in a way that aligns their dominant horizon lines, results in the cumulative effect of a continual landscape around the perimeter of the gallery.

Little Black Dress: A Fashion Evolution features 37 deeply-hued garments from the 1860s through the 2010s, drawn from the Historical Society’s collections, alongside artwork by Washington women of the same time periods.

A New Moon Rises showcases breathtaking images of space from Apollo landing sites to majestic mountains that rise out of the darkness of the lunar poles.

This exhibition shows the Washington State Historical Society’s collection of model canoes carved as representations of larger vessels and as art created for the tourist trade. Several different tribes, art styles, and canoe designs are represented here, dating from the 1870s to the early 2000s.

Well-loved Washington authors use the Historical Society’s collections to tell stories through artifacts and objects.

From its beginnings as a territorial prison through its tenure as a federal and state penitentiary, the story of McNeil illuminates how incarceration in the U.S. has changed over time, as seen through the evolution of the prison facility, itself.

Washington State History Museum is celebrating the history and many uses of glass in the new exhibition with nearly 400 glittering artifacts.

An art of deception and wonder, magic has been practiced throughout human history as a means to entertain and to enlighten. Sleight of Hand explores the connections between magic and spiritualism and their ties to the Evergreen State.

This exhibition showcases five paintings by renowned Seattle artist Jacob Lawrence that illustrate the story of George Bush, founder of Tumwater and one of Washington's first Black settlers.

Make/Do: A History of Creative Reuse focuses on the constantly evolving, cyclical nature of our relationship with objects, and takes a look at historical transitions of reuse and single use.

Each spring, Native artists from across the U.S. and Canada submit work for consideration by a jury of local artists and curators. This exhibition features 29 works by 21 artists, including textiles, sculptures, paintings, carvings, multimedia, and basketry.

Step into a turn-of-the-century nursery recreation, with period wallpaper, historic photographs and artwork, and toys and furnishings that represent what you might have seen in the children's room of a Washington home in the early 1900s.

PlayDates celebrates some of the most popular toys in America with a look into the collections of the Washington State Historical Society.

TOYTOPIA is a walk through the history of play, showcasing toys from different decades.

Incarcerated during World War II as a result of Executive Order 9066, the work of Takuichi Fujii sheds light on difficult events that most Americans did not experience, the lessons of which remain highly relevant today.