Shelter From the Storm: An Artist’s Eye in bicentennial year

Shelter From the Storm: An Artist's Eye on view at the National Academy of Design from September 17, 2026 through January 16, 2027. It revives a series that launched in 1992 and invites a National Academician to curate a show from the Academy's collection of more than 8,000 works of art and architecture. This edition is the first in the series since 2013. It is also the first co-curated by two Academicians, architect Stan Allen and artist Polly Apfelbaum, and the first with an architect as curator. The show gathers works that examine how artists and architects have responded to upheaval, uncertainty, and transformation in American history. It also serves as the Academy's culminating exhibition of its bicentennial year. The curators' selections span paintings, sculpture, drawings, architectural works, and mixed media, and they speak to conflict, loss, and displacement, as well as recovery and hope. One correction to the title you gave: the exhibition isn't limited to 1900–2000. Its works span more than two centuries, from 1788 to the present, and one-third are being shown publicly for the first time. Highlights include Howardena Pindell's Autobiography: Hiroshima Disguised (1982), Annette Lemieux's Boots on the Ground (2022), and Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects' unbuilt proposal for the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. Balancing these are calmer works such as Paul Resika's The End of the Hurricane (1979). In their catalogue essay, the curators say they favored works offering refuge and measured hope over easy consolation.