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February 26, 2009 - May 17, 2009
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This is the first major survey since 1995 of works by the French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (born 1911). Bourgeois has worked through most of the avant-garde artistic movements of the 20th century, from Surrealism to Conceptual art, but has always remained uniquely apart, powerfully inventive and often at the forefront of contemporary practice. The exhibition feature early drawings, prints, and paintings, as well as sculptures -- created using a variety of modern and traditional techniques -- that explore Bourgeois's core themes of femininity, sexuality, and isolation, while demonstrating that she continues to defy convention in her 90s.
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New: Black Box: Ori Gersht
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December 22, 2008 - April 12, 2009 Rotating Exhibition
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The Black Box theater showcases rotating exhibitions of contemporary artists who use film or video as their creative medium. Films or videos run continuously. December 22, 2008-April 12, 2009:
Ori Gersht (b. 1967, Tel Aviv), who currently lives and works in London, is noted for his series of large-scale photographs and arresting moving-image pieces. His work encourages viewers to reflect on the power of natural beauty and how it is affected by human intervention, such as the following film:
• The Forest (2006, 13:22 min.): The artist uses the camera to pan a lush, primeval forest located in the Moskalova woods that span Poland and the Ukraine, a site that has personal meaning for him. Sound alternates with silence and suddenly a tree falls to the ground with a thunderous echo. Who or what is causing the tree to fall? Is this a statement about nature and inevitability? Or is it an exercise in anticipation? Also, included are two other works that reference traditional Spanish and Dutch still-life paintings in which precise arrangements of foods, fruits or flowers, are shown at their peak, implying the inevitably of decay. Gersht's imagery does not decay by dissolving over time; it combusts, and then in slow motion, recalls the time-lapse imagery of Harold Edgerton's scientific action photography as seen in the following works:
• Pomegranate (2006, 3:52 min.) is shown on a flat-screen located next to the entrance of the Black Box Theater.
Note: Big Bang II (2006) is a recent acquisition on view on the 3rd floor.
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New: Strange Bodies: Figurative Works from the Hirshhorn Collection
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December 11, 2008 - late 2009 (new closing date)
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This exhibition brings together some of the most praised and popular examples of figuration, such as Untitled (Big Man) by Ron Mueck, from the Hirshhorn collection to show how expressionistic and surrealistic impulses toward human representation have evolved from the early and mid-20th century to recent decades. Also included is a small gallery devoted to a survey of works on paper and paintings by George Grosz -- works that demonstrate a socially charged use of the figure.
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New: Directions -- Terence Gower, Public Spirit: The Hirshhorn Project
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November 5, 2008 - March 22, 2009
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As part of the Directions series, on view is Terence Gower's Public Spirit: The Hirshhorn Project, which grew out of a planned utopian town that Hirshhorn enlisted architect Philip Johnson to design but was never realized. The exhibition includes a digitally animated video projection, which takes visitors on a tour of the proposed town and the surrounding landscape. The project also contains a large-scale sculptural model of two buildings in the planned town and a series of posters incorporating imagery and text related to the history of the Hirshhorn Museum, its collection, and its founding collector. Using his previous explorations of modernism in the context of architecture, Public Spirit explores the optimism of the Modernist utopia, the ideological complexity of public and private space, and the relationship between industry and philanthropy.
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Last update: February 5, 2009, 09:14
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