Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

Josef Albers: Innovation and Inspiration

This exhibition presents more than 60 of Albers' works from the museum's collection, along with key objects on loan from the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation on view for the first time.

February 13, 2010 – April 11, 2010

Hirshhorn Museum

Anne Truitt: Perception and Reflection

This is the first major survey spanning Anne Truitt's 40-year career since her death in 2004.

October 8, 2009 – January 3, 2010

Hirshhorn Museum

Strange Bodies: Figurative Works from the Hirshhorn Collection

This exhibition brings together some of the most praised and popular examples of figuration.

December 11, 2008 – November 15, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Sunset Song

Sunset Song, an 8-minute sound installation by Susan Philipsz, confronts visitors with questions about how an artist can deliver narrative and the ways an artist can sculpt space with sound rather than tactile materials.

July 1, 2009 – October 31, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Guido van der Werve

Guido Van der Werve is multi-talented, focusing first on painting, then performance art, and finally, film.

April 20, 2009 – October 11, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Walead Beshty: Legibility on Color Backgrounds

Beshty creates photographs and sculptures that reconsider some of the fundamental premises of modern art.

April 30, 2009 – September 13, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Louise Bourgeois

This is the first major survey since 1995 of works by the French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (born 1911).

February 26, 2009 – May 17, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Ori Gersht

Gersht's work encourages viewers to reflect on the power of natural beauty and how it is affected by human intervention.

December 22, 2008 – April 12, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Terence Gower: Public Spirit

The exhibition tells the story of the original proposal for the Hirshhorn Museum, which founder Joseph Hirshhorn envisioned as the centerpiece of a utopian “town of culture.”

November 5, 2008 – March 22, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

The Panza Collection and Ways of Seeing: Giuseppe and Giovanna Panza

Two exhibitions are on view: The Panza Collection and Ways of Seeing

October 23, 2008 – January 11, 2009

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Semiconductor

The film short featured is Magnetic Movie (2007, 4.47 min.), an eye-dazzling "documentary" created during the artists' residency at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratories, UC Berkeley.

August 25, 2008 – December 14, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Currents: Recent Acquisitions

Visit a selection of acquisitions that reflects the great diversity of works being acquired by the Hirshhorn, ranging from conceptual photography to sculpture.

October 18, 2007 – November 16, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality,and the Moving Image: Part II - Realisms

Explores the phenomenon that in an age when capturing real life in real time becomes ever easier, the line between fact and fiction is increasingly complicated.

June 19, 2008 – September 7, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Kimsooja

View a film by Kimsooja: A Laundry Woman, Yamuna River, Delhi (2000). In this film, the artist acts as a visual and spiritual mediator through which viewers are invited to contemplate the flow of the river -- a metaphor for life.

April 28, 2008 – August 17, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Amy Sillman: Third Person Singular

As part of the Directions series, see works that are intimate, psychological, and full of humor and pathos by New York-based painter Amy Sillman.

March 13, 2008 – July 6, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image: Part I - Dreams

Recall the dream-like state induced by film viewing in this exhibition, as artists employ the technology and techniques of cinema to evoke a sense of passage through different stages of consciousness.

February 14, 2008 – May 11, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Rivane Neuenschwander

Filmmaker Rivane Neuenschwander includes themes of chance and improvisation in her films and is perhaps best known for her photographic series.

December 17, 2007 – April 20, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Morris Louis Now: An American Master Revisited

See an exhibition of 30 works, the first retrospective since 1986 on Morris Louis (born 1912 in Baltimore, Maryland) which presents major paintings from the early 1950s until his death in late 1962.

September 20, 2007 – January 6, 2008

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Mircea Cantor

See films by Mircea Cantor, including Deeparture (2005), a film that recorded a suspenseful dance between a wolf and a deer trapped in a small gallery space.

September 17, 2007 – December 9, 2007

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

Black Box: Takeshi Murata

See films by Takeshi Murata (born 1974, lives and works in Los Angeles and New York) who produces films involving masterful manipulation of digital animation while also integrating hand-built dimensions.

May 28, 2007 – September 9, 2007

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

Directions: Virgil Marti and Pae White

Artists Pae White and Virgil Marti combine their individual creative practices to collaborate on a site-specific installation, which addresses how the transformation of a space changes its context.

March 9, 2007 – July 29, 2007

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Magnus Wallin

See two films by Magnus Wallin, best known for his short animations that have the quality of modern myths.

December 15, 2006 – May 20, 2007

Hirshhorn Museum

Refract, Reflect, Project: Light Works from the Collection

See 24 objects from the collection in which light -- as substance and subject -- is central.

February 15, 2007 – April 8, 2007

Hirshhorn Museum