THE HIRSHHORN MUSEUM AND SCULPTURE GARDEN

Smithsonian Institution, P. O. Box 37012, MRC 350, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012

Olga Viso, Director

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which opened to the public in October 1974, is the Smithsonian Institution’s museum of modern and contemporary art. The collection was initially formed by a series of gifts from its founding donor, Joseph H. Hirshhorn, from 1966 through 1981. Gifts from other donors and museum purchases have increased the scope of the collection, which now numbers over eleven thousand works of art.

The collection, which is international in scope, encompasses American and European paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings of the nineteenth century through the present. In addition to such nineteenth-century artists as Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer, the painting collection includes in-depth holdings of many twentieth-century Americans, including Josef Albers, Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Morris Louis, Horace Pippin, Clyfford Still, and Frank Stella. Supplementing those are paintings by European and Latin American artists, notably Francis Bacon, Fernando Botero, Jean Dubuffet, George Grosz, Oskar Kokoschka, Matta, Giorgio Morandi, Antoní Tapies, and Joaquin Torres-García.

The well-known sculpture collection covers the history of European sculpture from the mid-nineteenth century through the present, with major holdings of works by Alexander Archipenko, Ernst Barlach, Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, Oto Gutfreund, Barbara Hepworth, Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Medardo Rosso, and others. Complementing those are important sculptures by Americans such as Joseph Cornell, Gaston Lachaise, Elie Nadelman, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, and David Smith. Monumental sculptures by Alexander Calder, Henry Moore, Claes Oldenburg, Auguste Rodin, and Tony Smith are featured in the Sculpture Garden and Plaza.

Recent acquisitions have concentrated on international contemporary art, with paintings and sculptures by Joseph Beuys, Tony Cragg, Mark di Suvero, Lucian Freud, Robert Gober, Joseph Kosuth, Agnes Martin, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Doris Salcedo, Richard Serra, Jan Vercruysse, Rachel Whiteread, and William T. Wiley. The contemporary collection has recently expanded in scope to include works in photography as well as installations and new media by such artists as Roni Horn, Thomas Struth, Beat Streuli, and Tacita Dean.

Because there is room to exhibit only a representative selection of the collection, works in the galleries are changed regularly so that as many as possible are displayed over a two- to three year period. An active program of loan exhibitions, many of which are organized by staff curators, complements the permanent collection. Thematic exhibitions exploring aspects of modern and contemporary art have ranged from a survey of art of the 1990s, “Distemper,” to “Visual Music,” an alternative history of the abstract art of the past century featuring artists who explored ideas related to synaesthesia (a blending of the senses and synthesis of the arts). Recent full-scale shows have focused on the works of individual artists such as Isamu Noguchi, Ana Mendieta, Carlos Alfonzo, Jeff Wall, Stanley Spencer, George Segal, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, Robert Gober, Salvador Dalí, Ed Ruscha, William Kentridge, Clyfford Still, Juan Muñoz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Anselm Kiefer.

A series of exhibitions called “Directions” focuses specifically on contemporary art. Featured artists have included Cai Guo-Qiang, Tony Oursler, Toba Khedori, Louise Lawler, Sam Taylor Wood, Juliao Sarmento, Shahzia Sikander, Leonardo Drew, Cathy de Monchaux, Tacita Dean, Ernesto Neto, Ron Mueck, Cecily Brown, Janet Cardiff, Jim Hodges, Oliver Herring, and Jim Lambie. “Collection in Context,” an occasional series, has focused on significant aspects of the permanent collection, including Thomas Eakins’s Portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing, Paul Gauguin’s Hina with Two Attendants, Raymond Duchamp-Villon’s Horse, Henry Moore’s Stringed Figure No. 1, and Horace Pippin’s Holy Mountain III. Recent thematic exhibitions from the collection have included “Minimalism and Its Legacy” and “Metropolis in the Machine Age.” The museum complements a schedule of temporary exhibitions with ongoing dynamic rotations of the collection designed to encourage visitors to ask questions and experience art from a variety of perspectives.

To promote the study of modern and contemporary art, the Museum cooperates with art historians, students, and visiting scholars from throughout the United States and abroad. Intern programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels offer opportunities to work with the Museum’s staff. The Museum’s research facilities include the curatorial records on the permanent collection and a specialized library of thirty-six thousand volumes, supplemented by the papers of Elmer MacRae concerning the Armory Show of 1913, the Samuel Murray scrapbooks, and the Olga Hirshhorn Collection of Photographs of Artists. Graduate students and scholars may use the Museum’s facilities by prior appointment.

RESEARCH STAFF

AKS, Lee, Conservator of Sculpture. B.A. (1970), M.F.A. (1973) University of Maryland. Research specialties: Twentieth-century and contemporary sculpture techniques and preservation.

BEDFORD, Clarke, Conservator of Paintings and Mixed-Media Objects. B.A. (1969) Williams College; M.A. (1980) Cooperstown Graduate Programs. Research specialties: History of painting materials and techniques.

BROUGHER, Kerry, Deputy Director and Chief Curator. B.A.(1974) University of California, Irvine; M.A.(1978) University of California, Los Angeles. Research specialties: 20th century and contemporary art, with an emphasis on photography, film, and new media.

ELLEGOOD, Anne, Curator. B.A. (1990) University of Colorado, Boulder; M.A. (1998) Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Research specialties: international contemporary art.

FLETCHER, Valerie J., Curator. B.A. (1973) Connecticut College; M.A. (1976), M. Phil. (1979), Ph.D. (1994), Columbia University. Research specialties: European and American art, 1880-1960, particularly modern sculpture.

GORDON, Barbara, Associate Curator. A.B. (1973); M.A. (1975) George Washington University. Research specialties: Museum education, modern films.

LAKE, Susan, Director of Collection Management/Chief Conservator. B.A. (1970) University of the Pacific; M.A. (1973) University of California, Davis; Ph.D. (1999) University of Delaware. Research specialties: Modern art materials, microscopy.

VISO, Olga, Director. B.A. (1987) Rollins College; M.A. (1992) Emory University. Research specialties: International contemporary art.

AFFILIATED RESEARCH STAFF

BROOKE, Anna, Librarian, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries. B.A. (1964), M.L.S. (1965) University of California, Berkeley; M.A. (1988) American University. Research specialties: Contemporary and modern art.

HILEMAN, Kristen, Assistant Curator. B.A. (1995) American University, Washington, DC; M.A. (2001) University of Maryland, College Park. Research specialties: Contemporary art; non-object-based, relational artworks. Currently organizing a retrospective of the work of Anne Truitt.

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