Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth)

Situated on the museum’s outdoor plaza overlooking the National Mall, the participatory installation is open daily, weather permitting, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

June 8, 2019 – June 23, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse

Over the course of six months, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Pulse will animate the vital signs of hundreds of thousands of participants in the Hirshhorn’s largest interactive technology exhibition to date.

November 1, 2018 – April 28, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Charline von Heyl: Snake Eyes

The exhibition explores Von Heyl’s groundbreaking practice since 2005, presenting deeply visceral paintings that upend conventional assumptions about composition, beauty, form, narrative, and artistic subjectivity.

November 8, 2018 – April 21, 2019

Hirshhorn Museum

Sean Scully: Landline

In a site-conditioned installation, fifteen of the seminal Landline paintings are exhibited alongside a number of the artist's iconic stacked Corten steel sculptures and works on paper.

September 13, 2018 – February 3, 2019

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

The Message: New Media Works

Five contemporary film and video installations resonate with the voices of music, film, and pop culture.

November 18, 2017 – September 30, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Georg Baselitz: Six Decades

Georg Baselitz is the first major US retrospective in more than twenty years of one of Germany’s greatest living artists, marking the artist’s 80th birthday.

June 21, 2018 – September 16, 2018

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

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

Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body?

This is the first exhibition in the museum’s history to focus on live performance art, presenting new and recent works by leading performance artists who mix avant-garde gesture with popular culture, expressed through the rigor and dynamism of contemporary dance.

June 21, 2018 – August 12, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s

Brand New is the first museum exhibition to examine the artistic appropriation of commercial products in the late 20th century, a pivotal moment when artwork became a commodity and the artist became a brand.

February 14, 2018 – May 13, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Utopian Projects

The exhibition, spanning 1985 through present day, features more than 20 of the Kabakovs’ maquettes, whimsical models, for projects realized and unrealized.

September 7, 2017 – April 29, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Ai Weiwei: Trace at Hirshhorn

A display of Ai Weiwei's monumental Lego-constructed work along with other new pieces in the Hirshhorn's uninterrupted 3rd Floor galleries.

June 28, 2017 – January 1, 2018

Hirshhorn Museum

Nicolas Party: sunrise, sunset

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presents sunrise, sunset, a large-scale, site-specific wall mural by Swiss artist Nicolas Party.

June 7, 2017 – October 1, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Summer of Yoko Ono

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Washington, DC, the Hirshhorn presents a selection of the artist’s most iconic and emotionally charged installations and performances.

June 17, 2017 – September 17, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Markus Lüpertz: Threads of History

Showcases more than 30 paintings from Lüpertz’s formative years in the 1960s and ’70s.

May 24, 2017 – September 10, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection

This new rehanging of the third-level permanent collection galleries, features highlights of Joseph Hirshhorn’s original gift alongside some of the newest additions to the collection. Featuring more than 75 works in virtually all media, the exhibition includes several major artworks returning to view after more than a decade, such as Jean-Paul Riopelle’s 1964 Large Triptych, as well as in-depth installations devoted to some of the most important artists in the collection.

June 9, 2016 – September 4, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Linn Meyers: Our View from Here

Linn Meyers creates her largest work to date, Our View from Here, at the Hirshhorn. The site-specific wall drawing, which occupies the entire circumference of the inner ring galleries, covers nearly 400 linear feet.

May 12, 2016 – August 13, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

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

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

Bettina Pousttchi: World Time Clock

Over the last seven years, artist Bettina Pousttchi traveled around the globe creating World Time Clock, a serial work that consists of twenty-four photographs taken in twenty-four different time zones, in cities as far-flung as Bangkok, Auckland, Mexico City, and Tashkent

June 9, 2016 – April 23, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Suspended Animation

The exhibition brings together six artists who use computer animation in their work: Ed Atkins, Antoine Catala, Ian Cheng, Josh Kline, Helen Marten and Agnieszka Polska.

February 10, 2016 – March 26, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Ragnar Kjartansson

This comprehensive mid-career survey of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson charts his wide-ranging practice across film, performance, painting, and drawing.

October 14, 2016 – January 8, 2017

Hirshhorn Museum

Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change

Robert Irwin: All the Rules Will Change is a major exhibition by one of the leading postwar American artists. It is the first museum survey devoted to Irwin’s work in the pivotal decade of the 1960s.

April 7, 2016 – September 5, 2016

Hirshhorn Museum

At the Hub of Things: New Views of the Collection

A dramatic new installation of postwar masterworks from the Hirshhorn's permanent collection, rehung in the museum's newly renovated 3rd-Level collection galleries.

October 16, 2014 – April 24, 2016

Hirshhorn Museum