Anne Reeve, Curator
Anne Reeve, Curator, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Anne Reeve is the curator responsible for the Museum’s collection of modern and contemporary sculpture.
Reeve joined the Hirshhorn as Associate Curator in June 2018. While at the Hirshhorn, she has served as coordinating curator for the presentation of a landmark survey exhibition by artist Simone Leigh (November 2023-March 2024); organizing curator of the Museum’s first major exhibition devoted exclusively to the work of women and gender-nonconforming artists, Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection (August 2022-September 2023), which united almost a century of work from the permanent collection, a third of which had never before been on view; and co-curator of Lee Ufan: Open Dimension (September 2019-October 2020), a site-specific commission and the first exhibition to devote the Museum’s 4.3-acre Plaza to the work of a single artist. She was primary editor and contributing author to this exhibition’s accompanying catalogue, as well as to the compendium volume Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: The Collection (DelMonico + D.A.P, 2022), the first major publication devoted to the Museum since its opening in 1974, which incorporates original artist perspectives on the collection alongside never-before-seen historical works and newer acquisitions.
Reeve has coordinated numerous additional presentations of work on and for the Hirshhorn’s outdoor campus, including installations by Huma Bhabha and Sterling Ruby; the monumental commission Nicolas Party: Draw the Curtain (September 2021-October 2022), a 829-foot scrim featuring a digitally collaged original pastel painting that wrapped the Museum’s building during critical repairs to its envelope; and Abigail DeVille: Light of Freedom (October 2021-July 2022), which was contextualized at the Hirshhorn through the development of two original performances developed in close collaboration with the artist and presented on the National Mall: WAKE UP: Liberation Call at Dawn (October 2021) and Dark Matters (April 2023). Reeve is currently focused on curatorial projects associated with the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden’s revitalization plan, designed by artist-architect Hiroshi Sugimoto.
From 2009 to 2018, Reeve worked for Glenstone, a private museum in Potomac, Maryland, where she organized long-term presentations by artists On Kawara and Robert Gober in conjunction with a large-scale architectural expansion, as well as the accompanying catalogues Robert Gober and On Kawara. Additional Glenstone projects included the permanent outdoor installation of the sound work FOREST (for a thousand years . . .) by Canadian artist duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (2017) as well as the exhibitions Fred Sandback: Light, Space, Facts (2015-2016) and Peter Fischli and David Weiss (2013-2014). Reeve was also originator of Glenstone’s ongoing Oral History Program, interviewing over fifty collection artists, including Jo Baer, Matthew Barney, Hilla Becher, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, and many others. In 2014, she organized Glenstone’s annual Roundtable symposium on the topic of the artist interview, exploring the format as both document and practice.
Reeve is a contributing author to the forthcoming volume Great Women Sculptors (Phaidon, October 2024). Her essay on artist Jarrod Beck appears in the volume Making the Geologic Now (punctum books, 2012), and her writing has appeared in Art Papers and Art in America magazines. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in the history of art from University College London.
