The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives opens American Stories on Thursday, October 8, at the National Museum of American History. The exhibition brings artists’ books by more than 50 American artists to the museum’s first-floor Smithsonian Libraries and Archives gallery, where it is scheduled to remain through early 2028.
The exhibition uses the artists’ book form to bring together established and emerging voices, including Sol LeWitt, Adrian Piper and Ed Ruscha, according to library.si.edu. Smithsonian materials differ on the scale: the exhibition page says more than 50 artists, while a release on 2026 programming describes more than 40 artists’ books from the collection, according to si.edu. The materials do not explain the discrepancy.
The subjects range from identity and family to homelessness, gentrification, income inequality and less familiar chapters of American history, as reported by Axios. Axios also highlights Final Determinations: Cherokee by Blood, which uses hand-dyed silk to examine a government process that rejected thousands of Native Americans’ claims tied to forced removal.
Why the Smithsonian Says These Stories Matter
Anne Evenhaugen told Axios that the stories are interesting in part because they are challenging, and that audiences do not want a whitewashed, perfect vision of history. The comments offer one account of the exhibition’s approach; the show itself presents that approach through artists’ books and the varied subjects they take up.
Some of the works on view are one of a kind, found only in the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, according to library.si.edu, which also describes the exhibition as highlighting the artist’s book as a form for storytelling, reflection and creative expression. The Smithsonian release notes that the show includes a commemoration of Hawaii’s native culture, a Louisiana community’s rituals as a hurricane rolls in, and an artist’s celebration of her heritage through African and American fabrics, per si.edu.
A Collection Decades in the Making
The exhibition draws on a broader Smithsonian Libraries collection spanning numerous formats, styles and countries, according to the collection overview. Smithsonian libraries also collect artists’ books for different reasons; the Cooper Hewitt Library, for example, focuses mainly on paper engineering and construction features.
What the Book Form Can Include
The same Smithsonian Libraries overview says the collection is available to researchers for study and inspiration, and notes that the Cooper Hewitt Library collects books for features such as movable parts and spinning discs. That offers a glimpse of the form’s range, but the cited material does not trace how artists’ books developed or explain how Ed Ruscha’s early books compare with the handmade or one-of-a-kind works in the exhibition.
The Smithsonian Libraries and Archives also said accompanying workshops and public programs will be announced later this year, per si.edu.
Part of a Broader Reckoning With American Narratives
American Stories follows a pattern of recent Smithsonian exhibitions wrestling with contested versions of the country’s past. The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and Sculpture, which closed in mid-September, used historical statues and contemporary sculptures to examine representation, stereotypes and current issues, according to NPR.
Visitors will have until early 2028 to see how American Stories approaches identity, inequality and history through artists’ books—works that, as the collection and exhibition materials show, can take varied forms.
