Mammoth” is the museum’s largest ever single-artist commission and opens Friday less than a mile from the White House.

For “Mammoth,” a new show at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, he takes up contentious issues of race and climate change in beads, sequins and Lite-Brite colors.

At the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the artist Nick Cave collected thousands of objects to mount an exhibition on memory and history. His giant mammoth sculptures are potent, timely symbols of ...