Advance Exhibition Schedule Spring/Summer 2020
Upcoming
ONE WITH ETERNITY: YAYOI KUSAMA IN THE HIRSHHORN COLLECTION
APRIL 4–SEPTEMBER 20, 2020
Curated by Betsy Johnson
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Lower Level)
The exhibition debuts the museum’s new acquisitions by the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, including two of her renowned Infinity Mirrored Rooms. Building on the legacy of the museum’s 2017 blockbuster survey, “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors,” the forthcoming exhibition cements the enduring art-historical connection between the visionary artist and the Smithsonian’s national museum of modern art on the National Mall.
The exhibition illuminates Kusama’s (b. 1929) seven-decade practice in the context of the museum’s recent acquisitions to the permanent collection, including two of her transcendent Infinity Mirrored Rooms and sculptures, including “Pumpkin” (2016) and “Flowers—Overcoat” (1964), an early painting, and photographs of the artist. The Hirshhorn’s 2017 survey traveled to five North American art museums, introducing Kusama’s spellbinding visions to record audiences.
LAURIE ANDERSON: THE WEATHER
MAY 19–SEPTEMBER 7, 2020
Curated by Stéphane Aquin, Jaya Kaveeshwar, and Mark Beasley
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Second Level)
The Hirshhorn will present the largest-ever U.S. exhibition of artwork by celebrated multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. Spanning her groundbreaking video and performance works from the 1970s to recent years, “Laurie Anderson: The Weather” will guide visitors through an immersive audiovisual experience in the museum’s second-floor galleries. This dynamic survey will showcase the artist’s boundless creative process by highlighting time-based media, including “To the Moon” (2018), a 15-minute virtual reality work, as well as the largest exhibition of her paintings to date.
On View
MARCEL DUCHAMP: THE BARBARA AND AARON LEVINE COLLECTION
NOVEMBER 9, 2019–OCTOBER 15, 2020
Curated by Evelyn Hankins
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Third Level)
“Marcel Duchamp: The Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection” features the recent gift of over 50 major historical artworks, including more than 35 seminal works by Duchamp, promised to the museum by Washington, D.C., collectors Barbara and Aaron Levine. The first stage of a two-part show on the life and legacy of Marcel Duchamp, the exhibition comprises an unparalleled selection of artworks, thoughtfully acquired over the course of two decades and offering a rarely seen view of the entire arc of Duchamp’s career.
PAT STEIR: COLOR WHEEL
OCTOBER 24, 2019–JANUARY 18, 2021
Curated by Evelyn Hankins
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Second Level)
The Hirshhorn hosts the largest painting installation to date by the acclaimed abstract painter Pat Steir. “Pat Steir: Color Wheel” is an expansive new suite of the artist’s celebrated paintings, spanning the entire perimeter of the museum’s second-floor inner-circle galleries, extending nearly 400 linear feet. The 30 large-scale paintings, when presented together as a group, create two overlapping but opposing color wheels formed by the shifting hues of each painting, with the pours on each canvas often appearing in the complementary hue of the seemingly monochrome background.
LEE UFAN: OPEN DIMENSION
SEPTEMBER 27, 2019–SEPTEMBER 13, 2020
Curated by Anne Reeve
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Plaza)
The Hirshhorn has commissioned an ambitious site-specific installation by the celebrated Korean artist Lee Ufan. The expansive installation features approximately 10 new sculptures from the artist’s signature and continuing “Relatum” series and marks the artist’s largest site-specific outdoor sculpture project in the U.S. It is the first exhibition of Lee’s work in the nation’s capital, and the first time in the museum’s history that a single artist has been invited to approach its outdoor plaza as a unified space. Each of the sculptures are created in response to the museum’s unique architecture, and continues Lee’s iconic practice of placing contrasting materials, such as stainless-steel plates and boulders, in dialogue with one another to heighten awareness of the world, in Lee’s words, “exactly as it is.”
MANIFESTO: ART X AGENCY
JUNE 15, 2019–APRIL 6, 2020
Curated by Stéphane Aquin
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Second Level)
“Manifesto: Art x Agency” is a group exhibition that examines the art historical impact of artist manifestos from the 20th century to present day. The exhibition will include Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto,” presented as a multichannel film installation for the first time in Washington, D.C., alongside a diverse selection of works from the museum’s permanent collection. Comprising more than 100 works of art and ephemera created over a hundred-year period, “Manifesto: Art x Agency” explores how artists used manifestos to engage with the political and social issues of their time and how contemporary practices still employ art as a tool in the making of history.
WHAT ABSENCE IS MADE OF
OCTOBER 18, 2017–MAY 18, 2020
Curated by Gianni Jetzer
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Third Level)
“What Absence Is Made Of” presents artworks from the last 65 years that investigate the space between the tangible and the intangible. Selected from the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, the exhibition highlights new acquisitions by Annette Lemieux, Ed Atkins, and Huang Yong Ping, as well as collection favorites by Ana Mendieta, John Baldessari, Fred Sandback, and Ann Hamilton. The artists featured utilize absence as a powerful component in their work, employing such methods as reduction, erasure, negative space, and monochrome. Focusing on prominent themes in art since the 1960s, the exhibition charts the rising appeal of immateriality in reaction to an increasingly material world.
MARK BRADFORD: PICKETT’S CHARGE
NOVEMBER 12, 2017–NOVEMBER 14, 2021
Curated by Evelyn Hankins and Stéphane Aquin
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Third Level)
Internationally renowned artist Mark Bradford debuted “Pickett’s Charge,” a monumental new, site-specific commission inspired by the immersive form of the cyclorama as well as the museum’s distinctive architecture. The installation, which comprises a series of eight powerful, abstract paintings, each more than 45 feet long, encircles the entire Third Level, creating an immersive, 360-degree experience. Drawing directly from artist Paul Philippoteaux’s landmark 19th-century cyclorama depicting the final charge of the Battle of Gettysburg, “Pickett’s Charge” invites visitors to interrogate conventional historical narratives. Weaving together reproductions of the original 1883 painting with multiple layers of colored paper, Bradford transforms the historic imagery to reveal the hidden textures and complexities lurking just beneath the surface.
“Pickett’s Charge” is Bradford’s first solo exhibition in Washington, and his first major American solo show following his presentation as the U.S. representative for the 57th Venice Biennale.
BARBARA KRUGER: BELIEF AND DOUBT
INDEFINITELY
Curated by Melissa Ho
Organized by the Hirshhorn
(Lower Level)
Part of an initiative to bring art to new sites within and around the building, this installation by Barbara Kruger fills the Lower Level lobby and extends into the newly relocated museum bookstore. Famous for her incisive photomontages, Kruger has focused increasingly over the past two decades on creating environments that surround the viewer with language. The entire space—walls, floor, escalator sides—is wrapped in text-printed vinyl, immersing visitors in a spectacular hall of voices, where words either crafted by the artist or borrowed from the popular lexicon address conflicting perceptions of democracy, power, and belief.
At a moment when ideological certitude and purity seem especially valued, Kruger says she’s “interested in introducing doubt.” Large areas of the installation are devoted to open-ended questions, while the section occupying the bookstore explores themes of desire and consumption.