Hirshhorn Museum acquires 175 Artworks

Significant additions to the museum’s holdings in 2024 include works by leading global artists such as Laurie Anderson, Theaster Gates, Nancy Holt, Rashid Johnson, Mika Rottenberg and Dread Scott, as well as seven gifts from the esteemed Berezdivin Collection in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and numerous additions by rising global talents including Danica Lundy and Ilana Savdie. These acquisitions, spanning painting, photography, time-based media, sculpture, installation and mixed-media art, reinforce the Hirshhorn’s mission to champion diverse artistic voices and engage audiences with art that reflects and shapes contemporary culture.

“I’m overjoyed to welcome these works into the nation’s collection of modern and contemporary art,’” said Melissa Chiu, Hirshhorn director. “Our 50th anniversary invites reflection on our evolution, from Joseph Hirshhorn’s founding gift, to add artworks that reflect the full breadth of the art of our time.”

Among the significant additions by established artists working in mixed-media is Anderson’s work, “Four Talks Gallery” (2021), commissioned as part of her 2021 exhibition “Laurie Anderson: The Weather” for a site-specific installation on long-term view on the museum’s second level. It includes a hand-painted gallery and four sculptures taking the forms of a raven, a parrot, a canoe and a shelf that serve as storytelling prompts. A significant gift from the Berezdivin Collection includes installations and mixed media works by Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Dion, Omer Fast, Pepón Osorio, Michael Queenland and the collective SUPERFLEX.

The museum’s photography holdings are bolstered by achievements in humanistic and documentary photography as well as experimentation and abstraction. Two portraits by Gordon Parks—one of Helen Frankenthaler, the other of Reverend Ernest Franklin Ledbetter—are the first pieces by the artist to enter the Hirshhorn collection. Joel Meyerowitz’s “Cape Light ​‘July 4, 1976 Truro, Cape Cod. Lipshin Twins 7.5 lbs at birth​’” (1976) completes the full portfolio of Meyerowitz’s “Cape Light.” Other notable additions include works by Carlotta Corpron, Roy DeCarava, Nan Goldin, Arthur Leipzig and Reynier Leyva Novo. In 2024, the museum confirmed a gift from Larry Warsh of 109 photographs, made by leading Chinese artists such as Lin Tianmiao, Rong Rong and Wang Qingsong between 1993–2006. Many were displayed within the exhibition, “A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China” (Nov. 4, 2022–Jan. 7, 2024) at the museum.

Rising artists with work entering the collection for the first time include Cameron Clayborn, Abigail DeVille, Lenz Geerk, Martine Gutierrez, Danica Lundy, Lauren Quin and Ilana Savdie. Alongside these new voices in contemporary art are works by canonical American women artists, including Miriam Beerman, Katherine Bradford, Denise Green, Sheila Hicks, Joanna Pousette-Dart and Michelle Stuart. Highlights include:

• One of seven gifts from the Berezdivin Collection, “Traffic Patterns” (1998) by Allora & Calzadilla, transmits an organizing pattern of red, yellow and green synchronized lights to a traffic stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico, flooding a gallery space with light. The installation is reflective of the duo’s research-focused multimedia practice grounded in geopolitics.
• “Sweet Sanctuary, Your Embrace” (2023) by Theaster Gates is a sculptural tour-de-force of a piano covered in layers of tar and bitumen. Touching upon reoccurring themes throughout Gates’ career, the work pays homage to the sacrifice of industrial labor.
• Martine Gutierrez’s “Queer Rage, Imagine Life-Size, and I’m Tyra, p 66-67 from Indigenous Woman” (2018) depicts Gutierrez seated in a wooden chair in a verdant landscape. Beside her sit two dolls dressed, as she is, in layers of traditional Guatemalan textiles. Gutierrez’s chromogenic color print, a meditation on consumerism and identity, joins collection works by artists including Janine Antoni, Sondra Perry and Rong Rong, who also use self-portraiture and performance to explore identity.
• Conceptualized and created for the Hirshhorn, Rashid Johnson’s “living” sculpture consists of a three-tiered, gridded stainless-steel frame, which incorporates everyday elements: shea butter, plant life, books and light fixtures. A reference to artists such as Sol LeWitt and Carl Andre, the 2024 assemblage (to be titled) includes an elevated performance stage for programming.
• Mika Rottenberg’s work investigates the hyper-specialization of labor for systems of the supply chain. “Tropical Breeze” (2005) is an early video-based installation featuring a projection housed within a shipping container where four characters produce lemon-scented tissues.
• An installation piece, “610 MHz” (2018), by Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, draws on his long-standing interest in spiders and viewer participation. Visitors are invited to wander inside an immersive web, plucking cords and playing them like a musical instrument.
• Michelle Stuart has been a leading voice in the development of land art since its beginnings in the 1960s. “Desert Pleasaunce” (1990) is built from assorted plants and flowers from the area of Brookings, Oregon. The second work by Stuart to enter the Hirshhorn collection, it enriches the museum’s earthwork holdings by artists such as Robert Smithson.

Below is a sampling of the more than 60 artists whose works were acquired in 2024 by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden:

• Sharif Bey
• Cameron Clayborn
• Diane Dal-Pra
• Rineke Dijkstra
• Reynier Leyva Novo
• Wangari Mathenge
• Nan Montgomery
• Nam June Paik
• Lauren Quin
• Michael Queenland
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Kenzi Shiokava
• Tavares Strachan
• Jack Tworkov
• Mary Ann Unger
• Joan Witek

The new acquisitions join more than 13,000 works in the national collection of modern and contemporary art. Each will be conserved, photographed, studied and stored until public presentation.

Main Image: Installation view of “Four Talks” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2021. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Ron Blunt.