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The Interior Museum preserves, interprets, and displays art and artifacts related to the history of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the architecture of its 1930s headquarters building, which features the largest number of Public Works Administration murals of any U.S. Federal building.
Within the museum's collection of more than 8,000 objects are more than 1,450 works of art—from two of Thomas Moran’s masterpieces of the American West to official secretarial portraits painted by leading artists of the day. Collectively, these works of art provide inspiration and insight into the Department’s missions. Highlights include captivating paintings from William Henry Jackson, Alvin Pimsler, Kenneth Pauling Riley, John Schoenherr, and several artists-in-residence initiatives on public lands; the highly stylized wildlife art of American modernist Charley Harper; stunning landscape photography by Ansel Adams, George Alexander Grant, Galen Rowell, and others; works by contemporary Native artists; and intricate dioramas, murals, and artistic elements commissioned for the Museum’s inaugural exhibitions in 1938.