Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC and was designed by the architect Gordon Bunshaft . It is part of the Smithsonian Institution and was designed as the museum of contemporary and modern art of the United States . The museum primarily focuses on post-WWII art, with a particular focus on art from the past 30 years. Outside the museum there is a sculpture garden with works by artists such as Auguste Rodin and Alexander Calder .
The building is an open cylinder on four "legs" with a large fountain in the inner courtyard. According to Smithsonian staff, Gordon Bunshaft said of the building's design: If it weren't for stark contrast to everything else in town, the building wouldn't be suitable for a modern art collection.
history
In the late 1930s, the United States Congress commissioned an art museum for the National Mall. Up until that time, the National Gallery of Art was the only visual arts venue, but it focused on Dutch, French and Italian art. During the Second World War, the project was pushed into the background.
At that time, Joseph Hermann Hirshhorn , a successful uranium mining entrepreneur , began building his collection from classic French Impressionism to works by still living artists, American modernism of the early 20th century and sculpture . In 1955, Joseph Hirshhorn sold his uranium holdings for more than $ 50 million. He expanded his collection, which was divided into warehouses, an apartment in New York and an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut , to include an extensive area for the sculptures.
A sculpture exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1962 drew the international art scene's attention to the extent of Hirshhorn's collection. Information about his collection of modern and contemporary painting spread, and institutions in Italy, Israel, Canada, California, and New York vied for the collection. President Lyndon B. Johnson and the head of the Smithsonian, S. Dillon Ripley , had successful negotiations for a new museum on the National Mall in Washington, DC Federal law established the Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 1966. The museum is Funded primarily from federal funds, to which Hirshhorn later contributed a million dollars to build the museum. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in 1969.
Abram Lerner was the museum's first director. He oversaw the exploration, conservation, and installation of over 6,000 exhibits from Hirshhorn's Connecticut estate and other homes in Washington, DC
The museum and the garden comprise 5,600 m² of exhibition space in the building and around 16,000 m² in the outdoor area, the sculpture garden on two levels and a square. The New York Times described it as "a fortress that doubles as a museum."
Joseph Hirshhorn said in his opening address in 1974: “It is an honor to donate my art collection to the citizens of the United States as a small payment in return for what this nation has done for me and others who, like me, came here as immigrants . What I did in the United States, I couldn't have done anywhere else in the world. ”A million visitors saw the inaugural exhibition with 850 items in the first six months.
Curator of numerous exhibitions was the Swiss Gianni Jetzer , who is also the function of curator-at-large of the Hirshhorn Museum holds.
The patron
Joseph H. Hirshhorn (1899–1981), had emigrated from Latvia to America as a young boy with his mother and 12 siblings. After leaving school at the age of 13, he worked as a newsboy for 2 years. Then he started on Wall Street for $ 12 a week . A year later he had saved $ 255 and became a stockbroker. At the age of 18 he discovered his passion for art and acquired 2 etchings by Albrecht Dürer for $ 75 each. Over the years, his collection grew in size. At the opening, he donated 6,000 works of art for the museum named after him. After his death, the museum inherited an additional 6,000 works of art and $ 5,000,000 .
architecture
The building was designed by Gordon Bunshaft (1909–1990), a Pritzker Prize- winning architect and long-time partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill . It is shaped like a hollow cylinder and stands on four supports above the large square. There is a fountain in the middle.
Technical specifications
- The building and the walls are made of precast concrete
- Diameter: building: 70.4 m; Inner courtyard: 35.1 m; Well: 18 m
- The building is 25 m high and stands on four 4.30 m high, massive, sculptural pillars
- 6,000 m² of exhibition space on 3 floors
- Total exhibition area (inside and outside) 18,300 m²
- Auditorium with 274 seats on the lower floor
- 11,000 m² area below the building and all around
- 5,300 m² sculpture garden behind Jefferson Drive, 1.8 to 4.3 m below street level, ramps ensure barrier-free access
- The galleries on the 1st and 2nd floors have 4.6 m high walls and exposed coffered ceilings with 0.9 m deep coffers.
- In the basement there are exhibition areas, storage rooms and rooms for workshops and offices
- Offices and storage rooms are located on the 3rd floor
literature
- Emmet John Hughes: Joe Hirshhorn, the Brooklyn Uranium King. In: Fortune Magazine , 55 (November 1956), pp. 154-156.
- Barry Hyams: Hirshhorn: Medici from Brooklyn. EP Dutton, New York 1979.
- Jay Jacobs: Collector: Joseph Hirshhorn. In: Art in America , 57 (July-August 1969), pp. 56-71.
- JoAnn Lewis: Every Day Is Sunday for Joe Hirshhorn. In: Art News , 78 (Summer 1979), pp. 56-61.
- Modern Sculpture from the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Collection. Exhibition catalog. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1962.
- Harold Rosenberg : The Art World: The Hirshhorn. In: The New Yorker , vol. L, no. 37 (November 4, 1974), pp. 156-61.
- John Russell: Joseph Hirshhorn Dies; Financier, Art Patron. In: The New York Times , September 2, 1981, pp. A1-A17.
- Aline Saarinen: Little Man in a Big Hurry. In: The Proud Possessors . Random House, New York 1958, pp. 269-86.
- Kendall Taylor: Three Men and Their Museums: Solomon Guggenheim, Joseph Hirshhorn, Roy Neuberger and the Art They Collected. In: Museum 2 (January-February 1982), pp. 80–86.
Web links
- Hirshhorn Museum Official Website
- Ono contributes to "Wish Tree" - The artist Yoko Ono inaugurates "Wunschbaum" in the Hirshhorn Museum's Sculpture Garden
Individual evidence
- ^ Gianni Jetzer, Curator-at-large. In: hirshhorn.si.edu. January 3, 2020, accessed February 9, 2020 .
Coordinates: 38 ° 53 '17.5 " N , 77 ° 1' 22.7" W.
