Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

OSGEMEOS: Endless Story

Explore works by Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo, highlighting their playful combination of universal themes and shared imagination.

September 29, 2024 – August 3, 2025

Hirshhorn Museum

Pumpkin

The whimsical sculpture embodies two of Kusama’s most recognized motifs: pumpkins and polka-dots.

December 10, 2016 – July 6, 2025

Hirshhorn Museum

Jessica Diamond: Wheel Of Life

Wheel Of Life fills the Hirshhorn’s second-floor inner-circle galleries with 15 text-and-image-based artworks.

July 14, 2023 – January 5, 2025

Hirshhorn Museum

Simone Leigh

The first comprehensive survey of the richly layered work of Simone Leigh, among the most respected artists of her generation.

November 3, 2023 – March 3, 2024

Hirshhorn Museum

A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China

A Window Suddenly Opens is the Hirshhorn’s first survey of photography by leading multigenerational Chinese artists made between the 1990s and 2000s.

November 4, 2022 – January 7, 2024

Hirshhorn Museum

John Akomfrah: Purple

An enveloping, hour-long symphony of image and sound, Purple (2017) weaves together original film with archival footage against a hypnotic score to address themes related to climate change

November 23, 2022 – January 7, 2024

Hirshhorn Museum

Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection

Put It This Way is devoted to the work of nearly 50 women and nonbinary artists in the Hirshhorn’s collection.

August 2, 2022 – September 4, 2023

Hirshhorn Museum

One with Eternity: Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection

Building on the Hirshhorn’s blockbuster 2017 exhibition Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors, this new exhibition affirms Kusama’s legacy within the Museum’s collection and art history with new acquisitions.

April 1, 2022 – July 16, 2023

Hirshhorn Museum

Baseera Khan: The Liberator

Baseera Khan’s sculpture The Liberator (2022) points to ongoing and global struggles for justice, as well as the complicated relationships between Western museums, capital, and cultural identity.

May 4, 2023 – July 16, 2023

Hirshhorn Museum

Sculpture Garden

The Sculpture Garden offers visitors a contemplative haven in the heart of our nation’s capital.

October 4, 1974 – April 7, 2023

Hirshhorn Museum

Nicolas Party: Draw the Curtain

The exterior of the Hirshhorn’s iconic cylindrical building is the site of internationally renowned Swiss artist Nicolas Party’s newest artwork.

September 18, 2021 – October 17, 2022

Hirshhorn Museum

Sam Gilliam: Full Circle

Gilliam’s first solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn reflects the breadth of his multilayered practice and marks the first exhibition in Gilliam’s chosen hometown of Washington, D.C., since 2007.

May 25, 2022 – September 11, 2022

Hirshhorn Museum

Laurie Anderson: The Weather

Laurie Anderson: The Weather is the largest-ever U.S. exhibition of artwork by celebrated multimedia artist Laurie Anderson.

September 24, 2021 – August 7, 2022

Hirshhorn Museum

Abigail DeVille: Light of Freedom

Abigail DeVille's 13-foot-tall sculpture responds to the Black Lives Matter movement within the larger context of America's long relationship to the idea of liberty itself.

October 15, 2021 – July 26, 2022

Hirshhorn Museum

Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection

This exhibition features the recent gift of over 50 major historical artworks, including more than 35 seminal works by Duchamp, promised to the museum by Washington, D.C., collectors Barbara and Aaron Levine.

November 9, 2019 – June 5, 2022

Hirshhorn Museum

Toyin Ojih Odutola: A Countervailing Theory

The exhibition features a recent body of work in the form of a monumental cycle of 40 large-scale, monochromatic drawings that chronicle a myth conceived by the artist.

November 19, 2021 – April 3, 2022

Hirshhorn Museum

Still Life with Spirit and Xitle

Still Life with Spirit and Xitle features a car being crushed by a volcanic boulder with a comical smiley face painted on it by artist Jimmie Durham.

August 6, 2016 – November 6, 2020

Hirshhorn Museum

Lee Ufan: Open Dimension

The expansive installation, featuring 10 new sculptures from the artist’s signature and continuing Relatum series, marks Lee Ufan’s largest single outdoor sculpture project in the U.S.

September 27, 2019 – October 18, 2020

Hirshhorn Museum

Pat Steir: Color Wheel

The Hirshhorn hosts the largest site-specific exhibition to date by the acclaimed abstract painter Pat Steir.

October 24, 2019 – March 13, 2020

Hirshhorn Museum

Manifesto: Art x Agency

German artist Julian Rosefeldt’s epic, multi-channel video work Manifesto serves as the centerpiece to a display of works from the Hirshhorn collection highlighting works of art created in response to, or as a part of, artistic manifestos of the past 100 years.

June 15, 2019 – March 13, 2020

Hirshhorn Museum

What Absence Is Made Of

The exhibition explores the compelling and enigmatic ways in which artists use absence—the loss of body, of physical form or of memory—as a form of artistic expression for more than 70 years.

October 19, 2017 – March 13, 2020

Hirshhorn Museum

Feel the Sun in Your Mouth: Recent Acquisitions

Noteworthy new acquisitions to the Hirshhon permanent collection are on display.

August 24, 2019 – February 2, 2020

Hirshhorn Museum

The Evidence Room

Designed and built for the 15th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2016, The Evidence Room draws upon extensive archival research to recreate incriminating architectural features of Auschwitz that were dismantled and destroyed by the Nazis at the end of WWII.

June 12, 2019 – September 8, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Enrico David: Gradations of Slow Release

Enrico David has distinguished himself as one of the most original artists working today, fashioning a universe of imagery that revolves around the human figure and its many states of being.

April 16, 2019 – September 2, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Rirkrit Tiravanija: Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Green

On view is the newly acquired full-gallery Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Green (2010), an installation work of relational aesthetics by Rirkrit Tiravanija.

May 17, 2019 – July 24, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum