Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

orchids: A MOMENT

The Smithsonian Gardens and United States Botanic Garden 2017 Orchid Exhibition, showcases over 100 orchids in a limited-time display amidst the Hirshhorn’s unique architecture.

January 14, 2017 – May 14, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

e.e. cummings: The Poet as Artist

See the HMSG collection of 63 drawings, 5 watercolors and one oil painting by the American poet exhibited as part of Inscapes: Words and Images, a city-wide festival of poetry and its relation to the visual arts.

December 2, 1976 – February 6, 1977

Hirshhorn Museum

Zero to Infinity: Arte Povera, 1962-1972

This show features over 140 sculptures and large-scale installations by 14 artists who were part of a loose-knit movement known as Arte Povera ("poor art").

October 24, 2002 – January 20, 2003

Hirshhorn Museum

Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers

The first American retrospective in nearly 30 years of this highly influential French artist's career examines his life and work.

May 20, 2010 – September 12, 2010

Hirshhorn Museum

Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors

Spanning over five decades, the exhibition focuses on the evolution of the Japanese artist’s immersive, multi-relfective infinity Mirror Rooms. Free Timed Pass is required.

February 23, 2017 – May 14, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Works on Paper

See works on paper from the HMSG collection.

August 1, 1983 – September 30, 1983

Hirshhorn Museum

Works from the Hirshhorn Collection

View about 50 paintings and 9 sculptures from both the 19th and 20th centuries.

July 3, 1980 – January 4, 1981

Hirshhorn Museum

Wolfgang Tillmans

View approximately 300 photographic and installation-based works of Wolfgang Tillmans, internationally recognized for his photography that captures often overlooked objects and moments in everyday life.

May 10, 2007 – August 12, 2007

Hirshhorn Museum

Wolfgang Laib: A Retrospective

Survey the work of German artist Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950) who since the mid-1970s has deepened the Minimalist aesthetic by creating objects from pure organic materials.

October 26, 2000 – January 22, 2001

Hirshhorn Museum

Wish Tree for Washington, D.C.

A summer favorite, Ono’s interactive artwork invites visitors to tie handwritten wishes to branches of a living Japanese dogwood tree.

June 23, 2018 – September 3, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Winslow Homer Drawings

Visit a selection of works from the Cooper Hewitt National Museum of Design's collections to mark the opening of that museum in New York.

October 7, 1976 – December 12, 1976

Hirshhorn Museum

William Kentridge

View 13 animated short films and some 60 related figure drawings created since the late 1980s by South African artist William Kentridge.

February 28, 2001 – May 13, 2001

Hirshhorn Museum

Willem de Kooning: From the Hirshhorn Museum Collection

View 50 works by de Kooning who pioneered the "gestural" strain of Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s.

October 21, 1993 – January 9, 1994

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

Ways of Seeing: John Baldessari Explores the Collection

Recent gifts of 4 early works by American-born artist John Baldessari (b. 1931, California) provide an overview of the artist's important early period, in which he questioned the role of art and became a primary force in establishing what would later be termed "conceptual" art.

July 26, 2006 – September 20, 2007

Hirshhorn Museum

Visual Music

Visual Music surveys the impact of music on the visual arts over the last 100 years, showing successive explorations of the idea of synaesthesia -- the experience of one sense evoking another.

June 23, 2005 – September 11, 2005

Hirshhorn Museum

Vernon Fisher Works

This site-specific installation shows how the Texas artist combines texts and objects to create his art.

June 22, 1988 – October 10, 1988

Hirshhorn Museum

Variations on a Musical Theme: Selections from the Museum's Collection

See some 30 works including paintings, sculpture, and works on paper, ranging from still lifes of instruments to abstract works with musical titles.

July 22, 1982 – September 6, 1982

Hirshhorn Museum

Trough (Friedl Dzubas Painting)

On view for the 20th anniversary of the Resident Associate Program is Trough, a painting by Friedl Dzubas, a gift from RAP to the HMSG collection.

September 1, 1985 – October 31, 1985

Hirshhorn Museum

Triumph of the Spirit: Carlos Alfonzo, A Survey (1975–1991)

This first career retrospective features the ideographic and autobiographical works of the Cuban-American painter, who died of AIDS in 1991.

June 18, 1998 – September 13, 1998

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

Tony Lewis: Anthology 2014-2016

This installation of thirty-four original collage-poems by the Chicago-based artist Tony Lewis is being exhibited at the Hirshhorn for the first time in its entirety.

March 6, 2018 – September 16, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Tino Sehgal: This You

The Hirshhorn features a work by acclaimed contemporary artist Tino Sehgal. This You features a solo female singer who connects with visitors to produce intimate and memorable experiences.

September 1, 2018 – October 14, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Thomas Eakins Photographs: A Selection from the Permanent Collection

Honoring the 150th anniversary of the invention of photography, this exhibition includes 43 photographs of motion studies, people, nudes, and Arcadian scenes by the 19th-century realist painter Thomas Eakins.

March 21, 1989 – June 26, 1989

Hirshhorn Museum

The Uncertainty of Objects and Ideas: Recent Sculpture

Visit an exhibition featuring freestanding sculptures recently created by 9 international contemporary artists of different generations.

October 26, 2006 – January 7, 2007

Hirshhorn Museum