Past Exhibitions | Smithsonian Institution

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

Black Box: Jesper Just

See two films by Jesper Just; dark, vivid dreamscapes about shifts in power and loss of control.

August 23, 2006 – December 10, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Scottish artist Jeff Lambie transforms the museum's lobby into a lively, colorful, immersive environment that includes one of his signature taped floor pieces from his Zobop series and a group of sculptures.

May 13, 2006 – October 4, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Anselm Kiefer: Heaven and Earth

See the first American survey of Anselm Kiefer's (German, b. 1945) work in almost 20 years, featuring 40 large paintings, books, and sculptures created between 1969 and the present.

June 22, 2006 – September 10, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Black Box: Francis Alys

Delve into the everyday rituals and habits of the metropolis of London by following 64 individual Coldstream Guards as they move through downtown in this film by Francis Alys.

April 17, 2006 – August 14, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Visit the first major survey of Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948, Tokyo), featuring 118 photographs and 2 sculptures from 1976 to the present.

February 16, 2006 – May 14, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Oliver Herring

For a single 8-hour period using simple materials (paper, pens, tables, chairs, ladders, a "boom box"), New York-based artist Oliver Herring (b. 1964, Germany) creates Task on the Hirshhorn plaza as part of the Directions series.

April 29, 2006 – April 29, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Jim Hodges

As part of the Directions series, a monumental banner (70 feet by 25 feet) by New York-based artist Jim Hodges is featured across the building above the museum's main entrance on Independence Avenue.

August 19, 2005 – April 17, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Gyroscope

Visit a rotating exhibition that features innovative, experimental works from the museum's permanent collection. Each installation offers a different grouping of works gathered around a theme or individual artists and provides new ways of looking at its diverse holdings as well as in-depth exploration of notable artists.

November 3, 2005 – January 8, 2006

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Janet Cardiff

Multimedia sound artist Janet Cardiff (b. 1957, Canada) has designed a site-specific, outdoor audio walking tour around the Hirshhorn and National Mall titled Words drawn in water.

August 3, 2005 – October 30, 2005

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

Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor

See an exhibition marking the centennial of Isamu Noguchi's birth (1904-1988), the first museum show in over 30 years to highlight the tremendous diversity of forms, ideas, and materials in his sculptural works.

February 10, 2005 – May 8, 2005

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Cai Guo-Qiang: Traveler

Unlucky Year: Unrealized Projects from 2003-2004 is a series of drawings created by igniting gunpowder on paper, highlighting Cai's interest in using a seemingly destructive material as a tool for creation.

October 30, 2004 – April 24, 2005

Hirshhorn Museum

Ana Mendieta: Earth Body, Sculpture and Performance 1972-1985

Survey the work of Mendieta, celebrated for using her body to explore issues of gender and identity. Mature audiences.

October 14, 2004 – January 2, 2005

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Gabriel Orozco: Extension of Reflection

View approximately 34 of Orozco's photographs -- taken in Mexico, New York, India, and elsewhere from 1989-2003.

June 10, 2004 – September 6, 2004

Hirshhorn Museum

Douglas Gordon

Visit the first North American survey of Scottish artist Douglas Gordon (b. 1966) who is best known for his video installations, which take as their subjects such classic Hollywood films as Psycho and Taxi Driver.

February 12, 2004 – May 9, 2004

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Dan Steinhilber

The Hirshhorn presents the first solo museum show for Washington, D.C.-based artist Dan Steinhilber (b. 1972).

September 25, 2003 – January 4, 2004

Hirshhorn Museum

Gyroscope

Like the tool that gives this program its name -- a device that creates balance through a spinning centrifugal force -- Gyroscope is about art's power to draw people in and stimulate an exchange between artists, their work, and audiences. Reflecting the depth and range of its collection, a rich mix of approximately 350 works from the late 19th century to the present are on view.

May 19, 2003 – January 4, 2004

Hirshhorn Museum

Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting

This 40-year survey is the most comprehensive exhibition of paintings of this highly influential German artist (b. 1932) ever seen in North America.

February 27, 2003 – May 18, 2003

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Cecily Brown

Her first solo museum show features 7 works, including the never-before-exhibited Dog Day Afternoon 1999, in which Brown uses her body to paint the composition.

November 14, 2002 – March 2, 2003

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

Directions: Ron Mueck

The alarmingly realistic figures of London-based Australian sculptor Ron Mueck (b. Melbourne, 1958) are featured in this show of four works.

July 18, 2002 – October 27, 2002

Hirshhorn Museum

Open City: Street Photographs Since 1950

Charting the development of the street photograph from 1950 to the present day, this exhibition includes more than 130 photographs by 19 international artists.

June 20, 2002 – September 8, 2002

Hirshhorn Museum

Metropolis in the Machine Age

This installation of nearly 40 works from the 1910s through the 1930s revisits avant-garde art from both sides of the Atlantic.

February 28, 2002 – September 2, 2002

Hirshhorn Museum

Directions: Ernesto Neto

The Dangerous Logic of Wooing (2002) is the museum's latest site-specific installation by Brazilian sculptor Ernesto Neto.

March 21, 2002 – June 23, 2002

Hirshhorn Museum