In 1992 President George Bush awarded Allan the National Medal for the Arts, culminating a lifetime of achievements and awards which began with the selection of his work for exhibition at the 1936 New York World's Fair. In 1938 he received a major mural commission for the Department of Interior Building in Washington, D.C., and in 1939 his paintings were shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1948 he completed his first major sculpture, a commission for the Haskell School in Lawrence, Kansas. In 1954 he was recognized by the French government as they bestowed on him the Palmes d'Academique for his unique contribution as an artist. After retiring from a 25-year teaching career, he served in 1979 as the Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College. He was honored in 1985 with an induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, and in 1993 he was awarded the Prix de West from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. Also in 1993 he received the prestigious Ellis Island Award, and in that same year a permanent sculpture garden was dedicated in his name at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe.

For over five decades Allan Houser's work was featured in gallery and museum exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 1992, the same year he received the National Medal for the Arts, a major retrospective exhibition was organized by the Museum of New Mexico and toured throughout the United States.

While Allan Houser passed into the spirit world in 1994, his work lives on. His role as the first and most influential of all Native American sculptors was highlighted in a  1998 White House  exhibition, and his work has been paired with that of Henry Moore in subsequent exhibitions in Florida and California.  In 2002 he was the featured artist of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City with 19 of his monumental works displayed throughout the city and Olympic venues. In September of 2004 the Smithsonian honored him with a retrospective featured as an inaugural exhibition of the National Museum of the American Indian.  Major museum exhibitions have been mounted in recent years including not only his sculptural works, but also broad-ranging surveys of his drawings and paintings.  These have included a solo exhibition in 2006 at the Naples, Florida Museum of Art, 2007 and 2009 exhibitions at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, a 2008 exhibition at the Grounds For Sculpture near Princeton, New Jersey, a 2008 -2010 exhibition staged at the Oklahoma History Museum then moved to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A major outdoor exhibition was displayed at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix in 2009- 2010, and "Native Roots/Modern Forms", a solo exhibition was installed at the Denver Botanic Gardens in 2011.