Hirshhorn Announces 2023 Winter Programs
January 17, 2023
Hirshhorn Announces 2023 Winter Programs
In-Person Talks, Bold Performances, and Virtual Programs with Breakthrough Creatives Demonstrate How Leading Global Artists Respond to History in Real Time
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced its on-campus and virtual programs for winter 2023, with the majority spotlighting women artists. From expert discourse to a legendary choreographer’s swan song performance, the national museum of modern and contemporary art provides radical access to the art and ideas of our time. In 2022, Hirshhorn programs engaged a global audience of more than 100,000 and aim to expand that number this year.
IN-PERSON PROGRAMS
Behaving Boldly: Women Leading 21st Century Museums
January 19 | 6:30 PM EST
Ring Auditorium
In 2007, The Washington Post commissioned anonymous activist collective the Guerilla Girls to call attention to the under-representation of women artists in the collections of four national art museums in Washington, DC. Nearly 15 years later, the resulting artwork, Horror on the National Mall! (2007), is in the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, and each of the museums named in the tabloid-style poster are led by women. Join Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu, National Gallery of Art Director Kaywin Feldman, National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet, and Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery Director Stephanie Stebich as they discuss the responsibilities of representation and museum-building in the 21st century. Noted sociologist Sarah Thornton, who writes about the art world, will moderate.
This program is free; advance registration is required.
21st Century Consort presents Sound Shards
February 4 | 5 PM EST
Ring Auditorium
The 21st Century Consort, the Smithsonian’s resident ensemble for contemporary music, presents a two-hour concert, inspired by Mark Bradford’s 360-degree installation, Pickett’s Charge (2017). This program includes two world premieres, and, like Bradford’s monumental work, responds to the Civil War and invites visitors to question its lasting repercussions. A pre-concert discussion with composer and 21st Century Consort director Christopher Kendall will be held in the Hirshhorn’s Lerner Room at 4 pm.
This program is free; advance registration is required.
Yvonne Rainer’s HELLZAPOPPIN’: What about the bees?
Thursday, February 9 & Friday, February 10 | 7–8 PM EST
The Rasmuson Theater, National Museum of the American Indian
Yvonne Rainer, whom The New York Times calls “a giant of choreography,” brings her new work, which she has described as her “last dance,” to the National Mall. In HELLZAPOPPIN’, Rainer blends together 61 years of performance experience with “radical juxtaposition,” her trademark technique of layering pedestrian movement, dance, text, sound, and imagery. The narrative—which will be performed by a company of eight intergenerational performers, including actress Kathleen Chalfant—questions Rainer’s participation in resistance and racial justice using her signature language of layered film, text, and everyday movement.
HELLZAPOPPIN’ will be preceded by a screening of Rainer’s film, After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (2002), in which the artist mixes a dance she choreographed for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project with texts by fin-de-siècle Viennese thinkers and artists. Rainer’s choreography for After Many a Summer Dies the Swan initiated her return to dance after a long hiatus that had begun in 1972; like HELLZAPOPPIN’, it represents a milestone in her career.
Tickets are $20; $10 for Hirshhorn Insider members; $5 for students.
2023 WINTER VIRTUAL PROGRAMS
Talking to Our Time: Online artist talks
This season, Talking to Our Time—the free, live, online artist talk series launched by the Hirshhorn during the pandemic—gains insights into the lives and practice of contemporary artists Eva LeWitt, Dana Awartani, Tony Lewis, Loie Hollowell, and Jennie C. Jones.
Each forty-five minute “Talking to Our Time” program will stream on the Hirshhorn’s YouTube channel, Facebook Live and Zoom. Advance registration is required for Zoom participation, which includes the opportunity (time permitting) to ask the artist a question. Recordings are available on YouTube after the event. Any questions about accessibility for this series can be sent to hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
Artist Eva LeWitt: On Art and Possibility
January 11 | 8 PM EST
Artist Eva LeWitt joins Hirshhorn curator Anne Reeve to discuss how she taps into the evocative potential of everyday materials to make sculpture. LeWitt’s Untitled (Orange Oval) (2019) is on view in Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection.
Artist Dana Awartani: On Art and Heritage
January 25 | Noon EST
Artist Dana Awartani and Hirshhorn curator Marina Isgro will consider the role memory plays in our individual and collective past and future. Awartani is a Saudi-Palestinian artist whose work engages the complexity of Arabian cultural heritage by marrying acts of continual revival associated with traditional craft involving sand, soil, ceramics with contemporary art-making techniques like performance and video. Awartani’s mixed media installation, I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I’d forgotten you. I was dreaming (2017), is on view in Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection.
Artist Tony Lewis: On Art and Poetry
February 15 | 8 PM EST
Artist Tony Lewis and Hirshhorn curator Betsy Johnson will interrogate the ways through artistry that drawing, and assemblage become poetic tools that challenge critical issues. The conversation is prompted by the Hirshhorn’s publication, Tony Lewis: Anthology 2014–2016 and his 2018 exhibition of the same name, which featured 34 black-and-white collages using materials sourced from Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. The book will be available to purchase online and in the Hirshhorn Museum Shop in early 2023.
Artist Loie Hollowell: On Art and the Female Body
March 8 | 8 PM EST
On International Women’s Day, Hirshhorn curator Betsy Johnson engages painter Loie Hollowell to reflect on the confluence between the spiritual and temporal nature of the female form in art making. To echo the weighty curves of ancient fertility figures, Hollowell attaches spherical forms to her canvases, turning paintings into sculptural objects. Her approach is evident in Boob Wheel (2019), which is on view in Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection.
Artist Jennie C. Jones: On Art and Resonance
March 22 | Noon EST
Inspired by the inclusion of Light Gray with Middle C (variation #2) (2013) in Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection, artist Jennie C. Jones and Hirshhorn curator Anne Reeve lead a conversation about how sound can be made visible, and how histories can be embedded into seemingly simple forms.
About the Hirshhorn
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is the national museum of modern and contemporary art and a leading voice for 21st-century art and culture. Part of the Smithsonian, the Hirshhorn is located prominently on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Its holdings encompass one of the most important collections of postwar American and European art in the world. The Hirshhorn presents diverse exhibitions and offers an array of public programs on the art of our time—free to all. The Hirshhorn Museum and the Sculpture Garden are open daily, 10 am–5:30 pm. For more information, visit hirshhorn.si.edu. Follow the Museum on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Images (clockwise): Yvonne Rainer, HELLZAPOPPIN’ What about the bees?. Photo by Maria Baranova. Courtesy of Performa. Artist Jennie C. Jones. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn. Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg. Courtesy of the Hirshhorn. Close up of Dana Awartani’s I went away and forgot you. A while ago I remembered. I remembered I’d forgotten you. I was dreaming (2017). Courtesy of the Hirshhorn. Photo by Lucky Haile.
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