Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Founding

In the late 1930s, the United States Congress mandated an art museum for the National Mall. At the time, the only venue for visual art was the National Gallery of Art, which focuses on Dutch, French, and Italian art. During the 1940s World War II shifted the project into the background.

Meanwhile, Joseph H. Hirshhorn, then in his forties and enjoying great success from uranium-mining investments, began creating his collection from classic French Impressionism to works by living artists, American modernism of the early 20th century, and sculpture. Then, in 1955, Hirshhorn sold his uranium interests for more than $50-million. He expanded his collection to warehouses, an apartment in New York City, and an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, with extensive area for sculpture.

A 1962 sculpture show at New York's Guggenheim Museum awakened an international art community to the breadth of Hirshhorn's holdings. Word of his collection of modern and contemporary paintings also circulated, and institutions in Italy, Israel, Canada, California, and New York City vied for the collection. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Smithsonian Secretary S. Dillon Ripley successfully campaigned for a new museum on the National Mall.

In 1966, an Act of Congress established the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Most of the funding was federal, but Hirshhorn later contributed $1-million toward construction. Joseph and his fourth wife, Olga Zatorsky Hirshhorn, visited the White House. The groundbreaking was in 1969 and Abram Lerner was named the founding director. He oversaw research, conservation, and installation of more than 6,000 items brought from the Hirshhorns' Connecticut estate and other properties to Washington, DC.^[4]

Joseph Hirshhorn spoke at the inauguration (1974), saying:

It is an honor to have given my art collection to the people of the United States as a small repayment for what this nation has done for me and others like me who arrived here as immigrants. What I accomplished in the United States I could not have accomplished anywhere else in the world.

One million visitors saw the 850-work inaugural show in the first six months.

Institutional leadership

Kiepenkerl by Jeff Koons (1987)

In 1984, James T. Demetrion, fourteen-year director of the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa, succeeded Abram Lerner as the Hirshhorn's director. Art collector and retail store founder Sydney Lewis of Richmond, Virginia, succeeded Senator Daniel P. Moynihan as board chairman.^[5] Demetrion held the post for more than 17 years.

Ned Rifkin became director in February 2002, returning to the Hirshhorn after directorship positions at the Menil Collection in Texas and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. Rifkin was previously chief curator of the Hirshhorn from 1986 until 1991. In October 2003, Rifkin was named Under Secretary for Art of the Smithsonian.

In 2005, Olga Viso was named director of the Hirshhorn. Viso joined the curatorial department of the Hirshhorn in 1995 as assistant curator, was named associate curator in 1998, and served as curator of contemporary art from 2000 to 2003. In October 2003, Viso was named deputy director of the Hirshhorn, a post she held until her 2005 promotion to director. After two years, Ms. Viso accepted the position of Director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, departing in December 2007.

Chief Curator and Deputy Director Kerry Brougher served as acting director for more than a year until an international search led to the hiring of Richard Koshalek, who was named the fifth director of the Hirshhorn in February 2009.

Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden: cards for Yoko Ono's 2007 Wish Tree for Washington, DC

Richard Koshalek (born 1942) was president of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., from 1999 until January 2009. Before that, he served as director of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for nearly 20 years. At both institutions, he was noted for his commitment to new artistic initiatives, including commissioned works, scholarly exhibitions and publications and the building of new facilities that garnered architectural acclaim. He worked with architect Frank Gehry on the design and construction of MOCA's Geffen Contemporary (1983), a renovated warehouse popularly known as the Temporary Contemporary. He also worked with the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki on the museum's permanent home in Los Angeles (1986). Koshalek resigned in 2013 after the Bloomberg Bubble controversy (see below).

On June 5, 2014, Hirshhorn trustees announced that they had hired Melissa Chiu, director of Asia Society Museum in New York City, to be the Hirshhorn's new director. Chiu, who was born in Darwin, Australia, is a scholar of contemporary Chinese art. Chiu oversaw the Hirshhorn's 40th anniversary celebration in the fall of 2014.^[6] Chiu began her tenure at the Hirshhorn in September 2014.^[7]

Collection highlights

Notable artists in the collection include: Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, Henry Moore, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Hans Hofmann, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, John Chamberlain, Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Milton Avery, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Nevelson, Arshile Gorky, Edward Hopper, Larry Rivers, and Raphael Soyer among others. Outside the museum is a sculpture garden, featuring works by artists including Auguste Rodin, David Smith, Alexander Calder, Jean-Robert Ipoustéguy, Jeff Koons, and others.^[8]

Yoko Ono's Wish Tree for Washington, DC, a permanent installation in the Sculpture Garden (since 2007), now includes contributions from all over the world.^[9]

In 2018, the collection acquired its first piece of performance art, by Tino Sehgal: This You (2006), features a female singer performing outdoors.^[10]

In 2019, Barbara and Aaron Levine donated their entire Marcel Duchamp collection, one of the largest in the world, to the museum. The exhibit "Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection" ran from November 9, 2019, to October 12, 2020.^[11]

• 

  The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin (1889)

• 

  The Burghers of Calais

• 

  The Burghers of Calais (closeup)

Bloomberg Bubble controversy

In 2009, then Director Richard Koshalek announced that an inflatable structure would be erected over the Hirshhorn's central plaza to create a new public space. The Seasonal Inflatable Structure, to be called the "Bloomberg Bubble," was due to be erected in 2013 and would be inflated annually for one two-month period. It was supposed to create a 14,000-square-foot space for performance and lectures.^[12][13] Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the proposal won a progressive architecture award from Architect magazine.^[14]

Hirshhorn officials began reconsidering the Bubble in 2013. Construction cost estimates for the structure more than tripled to $15.5 million from $5 million, and no major gifts for the project were received between 2010 and May 2013. A Hirshhorn study also concluded that the cost of programming (such as symposia and special events) using the Bubble were likely to run a $2.8 million annual deficit. The Hirshhorn's board of directors evenly split on a vote to proceed with the project in May 2013. In the wake of the vote, seen as a referendum on his leadership, museum director Richard Koshalek announced he would resign by the end of 2013.^[15] Constance Caplan, chair of the museum's board of trustees, resigned on July 8, 2013. She cited what the Washington Post characterized as "a board, a museum and the larger Smithsonian Institution at a crossroads, roiled by a lack of transparency, trust, vision and good faith". Four of the board's 15 members resigned between June 2012 and April 2013, and three more (including Caplan) in May, June and July 2013.^[16]

Discover more about History related topics

National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art

The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction. The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

Dutch art

Dutch art

Dutch art describes the history of visual arts in the Netherlands, after the United Provinces separated from Flanders. Earlier painting in the area is covered in Early Netherlandish painting and Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting.

French art

French art

French art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from the geographical area of France. Modern France was the main centre for the European art of the Upper Paleolithic, then left many megalithic monuments, and in the Iron Age many of the most impressive finds of early Celtic art. The Gallo-Roman period left a distinctive provincial style of sculpture, and the region around the modern Franco-German border led the empire in the mass production of finely decorated Ancient Roman pottery, which was exported to Italy and elsewhere on a large scale. With Merovingian art the story of French styles as a distinct and influential element in the wider development of the art of Christian Europe begins.

Italian art

Italian art

Since ancient times, Greeks, Etruscans and Celts have inhabited the south, centre and north of the Italian peninsula respectively. The very numerous rock drawings in Valcamonica are as old as 8,000 BC, and there are rich remains of Etruscan art from thousands of tombs, as well as rich remains from the Greek colonies at Paestum, Agrigento and elsewhere. Ancient Rome finally emerged as the dominant Italian and European power. The Roman remains in Italy are of extraordinary richness, from the grand Imperial monuments of Rome itself to the survival of exceptionally preserved ordinary buildings in Pompeii and neighbouring sites. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, in the Middle Ages Italy, especially the north, remained an important centre, not only of the Carolingian art and Ottonian art of the Holy Roman Emperors, but for the Byzantine art of Ravenna and other sites.

American modernism

American modernism

American modernism, much like the modernism movement in general, is a trend of philosophical thought arising from the widespread changes in culture and society in the age of modernity. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States beginning at the turn of the 20th century, with a core period between World War I and World War II. Like its European counterpart, American modernism stemmed from a rejection of Enlightenment thinking, seeking to better represent reality in a new, more industrialized world.

Greenwich, Connecticut

Greenwich, Connecticut

Greenwich is a town in southwestern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. At the 2020 census, the town had a total population of 63,518. The largest town on Connecticut's Gold Coast, Greenwich is home to many hedge funds and other financial services firms. Greenwich is a principal community of the Bridgeport–Stamford–Norwalk–Danbury metropolitan statistical area, which comprises all of Fairfield County.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, Hilla von Rebay. The museum adopted its current name in 1952, three years after the death of its founder Solomon R. Guggenheim.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon B. Johnson

Lyndon Baines Johnson, often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He previously served as the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963 under President John F. Kennedy, and was sworn in shortly after Kennedy's assassination. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson also served as a U.S. representative, U.S. Senator and the Senate's majority leader. He holds the distinction of being one of the few presidents who served in all elected offices at the federal level.

Act of Congress

Act of Congress

An Act of Congress is a statute enacted by the United States Congress. Acts may apply only to individual entities, or to the general public. For a bill to become an act, the text must pass through both houses with a majority, then be either signed into law by the president of the United States, be left unsigned for ten days while Congress remains in session, or, if vetoed by the president, receive a congressional override from 2⁄3 of both houses.

Kiepenkerl

Kiepenkerl

Kiepenkerl was originally a sandstone statue of a travelling merchant created by August Schmiemann in Münster, Germany in 1896. Destroyed in World War II, it was re-created in cast metal by Albert Mazzotti Jr in 1953. The statue now stands in a small square in the Old Quarter of Münster. In 1987 American sculptor Jeff Koons created a replica of the design in polished cast stainless steel.

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons

Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist: US$58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and US$91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019.

Des Moines Art Center

Des Moines Art Center

The Des Moines Art Center is an art museum with an extensive collection of paintings, sculpture, modern art and mixed media. It was established in 1948 in Des Moines, Iowa.

The museum was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft (1909–1990) and provides 60,000 square feet (5,600 m²) of exhibition space inside and nearly four acres outside in its two-level Sculpture Garden and plaza. The New York Times described it as "a fortress of a building that works as a museum." An original plan with a reflecting pool across the Mall was approved in July 1967. When excavation started, a controversy arose, resulting in a revised design, with a smaller footprint, which was approved on July 1, 1971.^[17]

Technical Information

• Building and walls surfaced with precast concrete aggregate of "Swenson" pink granite
• Building is 231 feet (70 m) in diameter; interior court, 115 feet (35 m); fountain, 60 feet (18 m)
• Building is 82 feet (25 m) high, elevated 14 feet (4.3 m) on four massive, sculptural piers
• 60,000 square feet (5,600 m²) of exhibition space on three floors
• 197,000 square feet (18,300 m²) of total exhibition space, indoors and outdoors
• 274-seat auditorium (lower level)
• 2.7 acres (1.1 ha) around and under the museum building
• 1.3-acre sculpture garden across Jefferson Drive sunken 6–14 feet (1.8–4.3 m) below street level, ramped for accessibility
• Second- and third-floor galleries have 15-foot-high walls, with exposed 3-foot-deep coffered ceilings
• Lower level includes exhibition space, storage, workshops, offices
• Fourth floor includes offices, storage^[18]

Architectural timeline

• 1969. The Hirshhorn Museum groundbreaking takes place on the former site of the Army Medical Museum and Library (built 1887) after the brick structure is demolished. A controversy soon develops over naming a building on the historic National Mall after a living person, as well as the new federal museum's modern look and intrusively expansive sculptural grounds.
• 1971. Amid this climate of controversy, Bunshaft's original conception for the Sculpture Garden-an elongated, sunken rectangle crossing the Mall with a large reflecting pool-is abandoned. He prepares a new design based on an idea outlined by art critic Benjamin Forgey in a Washington Star article. The new adaptation shifts the garden's Mall orientation from perpendicular to parallel and reduces its size from 2 acres (8,100 m²) to 1.3 acres (5,300 m²). The design is deliberately stark, using gravel surfaces and minimal plantings to visually emphasize the works of art.
• 1974. The museum opens with three floors of painting galleries, a fountain plaza for sculpture, and the Sculpture Garden. In preparation for the opening, Hirshhorn curators and staff spend several months scrupulously planning the locations of artworks, both indoors and outdoors. Lightweight foam-core "dummy" sculptures are used to resolve the final placement of works in the garden. The originals, many of which had been airlifted from Hirshhorn's Connecticut estate onto flatbed trucks for transport, are put into place in the weeks before the opening.
• 1981. Closed since the summer of 1979, the Sculpture Garden reopens in September after a renovation and redesign by Lester Collins, a well-known landscape architect and founder of the Innisfree Foundation. The design introduces plantings, paved surfaces, accessibility ramps, and areas of lawn.
• 1985. The Museum Shop is moved to the lobby, increasing exhibition space at its former location on the lower level.
• 1993. Closed since December 1991, the Hirshhorn Plaza reopens after a renovation and redesign by landscape architect James Urban. The 2.7-acre (11,000 m²) area around and under the building is repaved in two tones of gray granite, and raised areas of grass and trees are added to the east and west.
• 2014. The Museum Shop is moved back to the lower level. The ongoing installation of Barbara Kruger's Belief and Doubt connects the shop with the lower level exhibition space.
• 2021. Extensive restorations to the outer portion of the building begin, requiring extended closures.^[19] In December 2021, the National Capital Planning Commission approved a large scale redesign and renovation of the Sculpture Garden by artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. The redesign is set to reopen underground access from the Sculpture Garden to the Hirshhorn building. Sugimoto's design was the subject of both criticism and critical approval from numerous artists, preservation groups, and academics due to its reimagining of the original Brutalist garden design.^[20]

Comments and criticisms

• "The whole complex has been designed as one composition ... Bunshaft's design is not concerned with the grandeur of the Mall. It is concerned with the greater grandeur of his museum and it gives us an awful lot of beaux-arts pavement and pomposity that no longer seem to suit the taste and style of our times." Wolf Von Eckhardt, The Washington Post, February 6, 1971.
• "The circular plan is not only clear, but also provides a pleasant processional sequence that goes a long way. ... The fortress quality of the Hirshhorn suggests some rather obvious thoughts about the nature of housing art in our time. But the building's architecture ... is less the product of a desire to make a statement ... than it is a logical progression in aesthetic development. ... " Paul Goldberger, The New York Times, October 2, 1974.
• "[The building] is known around Washington as the bunker or gas tank, lacking only gun emplacements or an Exxon sign ... It totally lacks the essential factors of esthetic strength and provocative vitality that make genuine 'brutalism' a positive and rewarding style. This is born-dead, neo-penitentiary modern. Its mass is not so much aggressive or overpowering as merely leaden." Ada Louise Huxtable, The New York Times, October 6, 1974.
• "The parched severity of [the original Sculpture Garden] was not without merit, but the appeal was more to the mind than to the senses, more theoretical than practical. ... The new design reinforces the identity of the garden as a welcoming urban park. ... [This] park for art ... serves the sculpture. The divisions of the space prove essential accents; artworks pop in and out of view as the spectator moves about the space. ... " Benjamin Forgey, The Washington Post, September 12, 1981.
• "[The Hirshhorn is] the biggest piece of abstract art in town – a huge, hollowed cylinder raised on four massive piers, in absolute command of its walled compound on the Mall. ... The circular fountain ... is a grand concoction ... that for good reason has become the museum's visual trademark." Benjamin Forgey, The Washington Post, November 4, 1989.

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  The museum's exterior viewed from the north.

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  Exterior viewed from the northeast.

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  North entrance

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  View from within the central courtyard.

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  View looking toward the central courtyard.

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  Central courtyard and fountain.

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  Inner gallery.

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  Outer gallery.

• 

  Basement gallery.

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Gordon Bunshaft

Gordon Bunshaft

Gordon Bunshaft,, was an American architect, a leading proponent of modern design in the mid-twentieth century. A partner in Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), Bunshaft joined the firm in 1937 and remained with it for more than 40 years. His notable buildings include Lever House in New York, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., the National Commercial Bank in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 140 Broadway, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Branch Bank in New York.

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2022 to comprise 740,000 paid print subscribers, and 8.6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as The Daily. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company. The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print, it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the United States. The newspaper is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Times Square, Manhattan.

Army Medical Museum and Library

Army Medical Museum and Library

The Army Medical Museum and Library (AMML) of the U.S. Army was a large brick building constructed in 1887 at South B Street and 7th Street, SW, Washington, D.C., which is directly on the National Mall. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The building was demolished in 1969, and the collections at the focus of the landmark designation were dispersed.

Lester Collins (landscape architect)

Lester Collins (landscape architect)

Lester Albertson Collins (1914–1993) was an American landscape architect. He studied landscape architecture at Harvard, including studies of gardens in East Asia in 1940. After World War II, he began to teach as a professor at Harvard. Collins traveled to Japan in 1953 to work for a year on the translation of an ancient Japanese book. In 1954 he settled in Washington, D.C., and worked for the firm Simonds & Simonds in Pittsburgh. He worked on town plans, campus plans, and public gardens such as the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. Over 55 years, he developed and directed the Innisfree Garden in Millbrook, New York.

Landscape architect

Landscape architect

A landscape architect is a person who is educated in the field of landscape architecture. The practice of landscape architecture includes: site analysis, site inventory, site planning, land planning, planting design, grading, storm water management, sustainable design, construction specification, and ensuring that all plans meet the current building codes and local and federal ordinances.

James Urban

James Urban

James Urban is an American football coach who is the quarterbacks coach for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League (NFL). He previously served as an assistant coach for the Cincinnati Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles.

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger

Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.

National Capital Planning Commission

National Capital Planning Commission

The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) is a U.S. government executive branch agency that provides planning guidance for Washington, D.C., and the surrounding National Capital Region. Through its planning policies and review of development proposals, the Commission seeks to protect and enhance the extraordinary resources of the national capital.

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer and architect. He leads the Tokyo-based architectural firm New Material Research Laboratory.

Beaux-Arts architecture

Beaux-Arts architecture

Beaux-Arts architecture was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, particularly from the 1830s to the end of the 19th century. It drew upon the principles of French neoclassicism, but also incorporated Renaissance and Baroque elements, and used modern materials, such as iron and glass. It was an important style in France until the end of the 19th century.

Exxon

Exxon

Exxon Corporation, formerly known as the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey until 1973, was an American oil company and descendant of Standard Oil which merged with Mobil to form ExxonMobil in 1999. Once one of the Seven Sisters that dominated the global petroleum industry, Exxon was one of the largest companies in the world, being one of the top five companies on Fortune 500 between the first edition of the list and the year of its merger with Mobil and reaching the #1 spot on the list a few years between 1970 and 1995.

In 2013, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden drew around 645,000 visitors. It has a budget of $8 million, which does not include the $10 to $12 million in operational support supplied by the Smithsonian Institution.^[21]

In 2019, the museum drew around 890,000 visitors.^[22] The following year, the museum saw a significant decline in visitors due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related museum closures. The Hirshhorn remained closed to the public from March 2020 until August 2021.^[23] In 2020, visitor numbers fell to around 133,000. In 2021, visitor numbers rose to around 167,000.^[22]