Past Exhibitions

Visitors are transported back to a time when, if you were Black, it took bravery and a Green-Book to cross the country safely. The exhibition includes film, photographs, art installations, interactives, oral histories from travelers and Green-Book business owners, and comparisons of Green-Book sites then and now. It also features historical objects from the Smithsonian and from Green-Book sites, including a rare example of a Green-Book, matchbooks, business signs, brochures, "sundown" signs, and historical documents.

Over the past ten years, acclaimed artist Judy Gelles has interviewed and photographed more than 300 fourth-grade students from a wide range of economic and cultural backgrounds. These students’ stories capture the gamut of societal issues that we face today.

Looking across city blocks and quilt blocks, roadways and seams, one can see a visible kinship between quilt making and cartography. Both are built upon established systems that use color, pattern, and symbols to create whole compositions from a network of interlocked parts. Quilts and maps are also infused with history and memory—similarly living records of traditions, experiences, relationships, beliefs, and future aspirations.

See a selection of bird’s-eye view maps from the Historical Society's collections illustrating cities and towns from across Washington. Also called panoramic maps, they were drawn to give the viewer a sense of looking down at a city and its major features as if they were flying above it. Maps on view are from the late 1800s -early 1900s as well as more recently created maps inspired by the panoramic style. Also featuring historic surveying, mapmaking, and illustration tools.

Take a journey through the marvelously detailed world of model trains! The Washington State History Museum’s 25th Annual Model Train Festival rolls into town Friday, December 17, 2021 and runs through Sunday, January 9, 2022.

This exhibit highlights historical narratives of transgender people in the West and considers how westward migration provided opportunities for self-expression and fulfillment. Traversing unfamiliar territory, these individuals crossed both physical boundaries and the perceptual boundaries of their earlier lives. Join us in learning more about the history of gender, identity, and changing cultural perceptions in the West and the connections between transgender history and the LGBTQ+ community today.

The WSHS and UW collaborated to provide a unique learning experience for students in the capstone course for the Public Health/Global Health major. This exhibition is the result of the student's work. By exploring poignant personal accounts of people in our community, you'll come away with a clearer, more diverse understanding of the reach and ramifications of this global crisis as it played out right here at home.

This exhibition from the NWMAC in Spokane celebrates three contemporary Columbia River Plateau women alongside historic objects and images from the NWMAC’s collection. The art of these cultures reflects traditional lifeways borne of a time-honored and interdependent relationship with the natural world. Women have been the primary makers of the functional forms necessary to everyday life.

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.

Our largest exhibit is a walk through time, showcasing some of the state’s earliest history and a variety of artifacts from Native American civilizations and cultures.

This new long-term gallery at Washington State History Museum explores the intergenerational impacts and legacy of the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II as a result of Executive Order 9066. Many of the letters, photographs, ephemera, and objects on view were contributed by people in our community who were incarcerated, or are the descendants of those who were incarcerated.

This permanent exhibit explores migration and immigration through the experiences of diverse individuals who, over time, have come to live in Washington.

Why is it called 360, you may wonder? That's the distance in miles from the eastern flatland to the western shore, measuring between the boundaries drawn when Washington became a state in 1889. From mountain and prairie to river and sea, relationships to place have sustained and drawn people here, while shaping the lives of those who have always called this land home.

Celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Explore an online exhibit about Dr. King’s visit to Washington in 1961. Make your own Right to Dream Star by following along with a video by arts educator Valencia Carroll.