The Least-Visited Smithsonian Museum Is An Underappreciated, Crowd-Free Gem Filled With Local Culture

One of the best activities you can do while on vacation in Washington, D.C. is to visit its free, iconic Smithsonian museums. There are 21 in total, mostly clustered around the National Mall. Many of them are world-renowned — the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History boasts the largest collection of its kind in the world, for example. There's one downside to many of these attractions, though, which is the crowds. The National Museum of Natural History saw 3.9 million visitors in 2024, according to the Smithsonian visitor statistics. But that's not the case for one lonesome gallery tucked in the humble neighborhood of Anacostia.

The Southeast quadrant's only Smithsonian museum is the Anacostia Community Museum, which has the fewest visitors of any of them — only 14,076 in the entire year for 2024. The low visitor count owes, in part, to the museum's distance from the city's center. If you take the Green Line metro from the National Mall, the closest station to the museum is Anacostia, and then it's over a 20-minute walk. From the Washington Dulles International Airport, it's a nearly an hour drive to the museum.

But those who make the trip will be rewarded with a contemplative, peacefully uncrowded sanctuary that has a community touch you won't find in other Smithsonian collections. Unlike the other museums that boast world-class artifacts and ancient finds, the Anacostia Community Museum focuses on the everyday lives of the people who live all around it. "They [the community] actually find themselves in this museum. They find their history in this museum," said Jennifer Morris, one of the museum's archivists, in WAMU.

When you enter the Anacostia Community Museum, don't worry about taking out your wallet. Washington, D.C., is the capital of free museums, with this attraction being among them. It was founded in 1967, initially as an outreach project that brought in art and artifacts from other Smithsonian museums. But its mission and content shifted when its founding director and local activist, John Kinard, laid out a plan to pay tribute to the local community's everyday issues and feats, particularly among its working-class and Black residents. One of its first exhibitions was about rats in the city, while another told a straightforward story about how the neighborhood came to be.

The Anacostia Community Museum's exhibits change regularly, with some recent displays focusing on Black arts education in the city and food insecurity. The gallery often includes interactive elements, like invitations for visitors to make their own art inspired by the installation's themes. The museum's permanent exhibits showcase some of its vast archives of items and documents from the neighborhood, including everything from artificial nail designs to a locally excavated whiskey bottle. A highlight is the collection of artworks from self-taught artists. The museum also hosts a fresh farm stand every Saturday in its plaza from April through November. Otherwise, the museum's standard hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.