Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

10/14/2026

How did a woman photographer in Denton, TX almost a century ago shape the course of art history?

Let us introduce you to Carlotta Corpron

“Light Is a Plastic Medium: The Photography of Carlotta Corpron” (Oct. 16, 2026-March 14, 2027) introduces an artist long overlooked with a sweeping survey. Photographs from the six major bodies of work that she made between the mid-1930s and the early 1950s reveal how Corpron’s dynamic approach to Abstraction developed. Starting with studies of flowers, she tested the limits of the camera and darkroom until light itself became her subject. Her breakthrough prints eventually supported the acceptance of photography as a fine art.

Join us on Friday, Oct. 16 to celebrate the opening. The Museum and Dolcezza will stay open until 8:30 pm. Join Associate Curator Betsy Johnson for a tour at 6 pm and Katy Hessel, founder of at 7:15pm for an in-gallery discussion. Bring your friends and your 📷 📸.

10/11/2026

Our new Sculpture Garden boasts flexible galleries that will introduce new traditions including an annual focused exhibition. It will open on Saturday, Oct. 31 with a very special guest: Yosh*tomo Nara. Join us at 11 AM to welcome him back to the 🍩!

Our inaugural West Lawn installation is "Yosh*tomo Nara: Sentinels of Stillness" (Oct. 31, 2026-Nov. 7, 2027), an installation of three monumental sculptures—each one a new enlargement of a small clay head fabricated in painted aluminum—by that emphasize the interplay between his lived experience and sculpture's premodern origins: hand-building with natural material.

The exhibition has been made possible with generous support from Iris and Adam Singer, with special thanks to Equivalence Art Agency.

Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden and "Sentinels of Stillness" will open with the same hours as the Museum: Tuesday-Sunday, 10 am-5:30pm; Monday, noon-5:30 pm. Open daily (closed Dec. 25) and free, always.
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photo: Ryoichi Kawajiri. Artwork courtesy of

10/10/2026

Effervescent English author, podcaster, and creator of , Katy Hessel studies and shares the history of art centered on the achievements of women. She's returning with a NEW BOOK FOR KIDS! Together with illustrator , she'll cohost a family book party for “An Illustrated Guide to Amazing Women Artists" on Saturday, Oct. 17 at 11 AM.

Adult Hessel-heads, we have you covered too:hessel will also pop up on Friday, Oct. 16 at 7 PM inside “Light Is a Plastic Medium: The Photography of Carlotta Corpron” to talk with us about this singular American artist on the opening day. We’ll celebrate our new monographic 📸 exhibition by keeping the Museum open until 8:30 PM. You should join us. will be pouring, scooping, and soft serving too.

Registration for both special events is strongly recommended.

Portrait by Lily Bertrand Webb, courtesy of the author.

09/23/2026

Happy birthday to Louise Nevelson (1899–1988)! 🎂

Born on this day in Kyiv, Ukraine, Nevelson is known for her monochromatic sculptures made of found and scavenged wood. While many of her male counterparts worked in welded metal during the 1940s and 1950s, Nevelson assembled evocative constructions of wooden scraps and objects, and this material became both the foundation and crux of her art. "Black Wall" (1964) reflects Cubism's profound influence and features Nevelson's well-known box motif. Like all of her work, it is both a poeticized abstraction and an exploration of form.

🍰 Find Louise Nevelson's "Black Wall" (1964) in "Revolutions," only at the Hirshhorn.

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Image credits: Louise Nevelson, "Black Wall," 1964. Wood, paint, and metal. 65 x 39 1/2 x 10 1/4 in. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. Courtesy . © 2026 Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photos by Cathy Carver.

09/22/2026

Happy birthday to Alma Thomas (1891–1978)! 🎂

An instigator of firsts, Alma Thomas was the first fine arts graduate of Howard University and, at the age of 80 in 1972, the first Black woman to hold a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was also a significant fixture of an energetic art scene in Washington, DC, where she worked as a public-school teacher for close to 30 years. While Thomas may be best known for her signature style featuring short, colorful brushstrokes, she also experimented with other artistic styles throughout the 1950s. During this time, she produced a variety of artworks, including paintings like this one that made heavy use of blue and brown tones.

🎨 Come closer to Alma Thomas’s “Blue and Brown Still Life” (1958), now on view in “Revolutions"

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Image credit: Alma Thomas, “Blue and Brown Still Life,” 1958. Oil on fiberboard. 23 ⅞ × 32 in. Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1976. Courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

09/14/2026

Artmaking takes imagination--and courage!

Join us Saturday, Sept. 19 between 10am-2pm for , a family-focused takeover of our Museum and Plaza! We'll be joined by , author and illustrator of the bestselling picture book, "The Dot." Peter will read his bestseller aloud at 11am and 1 pm, we'll lead dot-inspired artmaking in Art School and on our plaza with and host happenings, like mini spotlight, err "dotlight," tours throughout our galleries. Free, registration is encouraged.

We're a tot hot spot. 🍩

📸: courtesy of the author

09/12/2026

On Saturday, October 31, we will open the new Sculpture Garden, reimagined by as the most easily accessed cultural site of its kind in the Nation. We are finalizing artwork installations including collection treasures and a few BIG surprises alongside more than 30,000 plants and trees. Visiting us will easier than ever, and more rewarding.

Sugimoto's revitalization offers five points of entry including Gordon Bunshaft's underground passageway, which our artist-architect reopens as "Passage of Reflectance" (2026), a mirrored steel corridor that invites light inside and begs visitors to play with their reflections. In the words of in : "His garden, now close to completion, extends his lobby design logic outward, re-establishing a visual and physical connection between the museum, its landscape and the Mall. The new design is structured as an invitation. Visitors approach a wider entry, peering directly into a space that reveals itself all at once."

Consider yourself invited.

📸: Hiroshi Sugimoto. Photo by Greg Kahn, 2026. Courtesy of

09/09/2026

We are excited to announce the joint acquisition of two watershed artworks by pioneering multimedia artist Joan Jonas with at Kenyan College. "Wind" (1968) and "Mirror Pieces Installation II" (1969/2014) are strong representations of the artist’s early work, and the first by Jonas to enter both institutions’ collections.

In celebration of our shared commitment, join us on Thursday, September 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hirshhorn Museum for a conversation between Jonas, Marina Isgro, curator of media and performance art and interim head curator at the Hirshhorn, and Daisy Desrosiers, previously the David and Francie Horvitz Family Foundation Director and Chief Curator and incoming curatorial and strategic lead at The Gund/Britton Family Curator-at-Large, North America, at Tate Modern.

We look forward to bringing Joan Jonas’s work to new and returning audiences! Registration is free. Sign up for the free public program: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/event/artist-talk-joan-jonas/

📸: Joan Jonas. Photo by Maximilian Geuter, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Gladstone. Joan Jonas, "Mirror Pieces Installation II," 1969/2014. Mirrors, performances film on DVD, safety backing, mirror costumes.

FREE Advance Insider tickets available Friday, August 21, 7 PM (space is limited) General tickets available Monday, August 24, 7 PM We strongly recommend claiming a ticket to ensure your […]

09/07/2026

Happy birthday to Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000)! 🎂

Born on this day in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Lawrence is known for his socially conscious and formally complex artworks depicting the African American experience. He used his signature style, which he called "dynamic cubism," to portray a range of subjects, from major historical moments and figures to scenes of everyday African American life in Harlem. Committed to both painted and verbal narratives, Lawrence's works bring historical and contemporary stories to life through vivid colors, bold geometric shapes, and flattened planes.

🎨 Come closer to Jacob Lawrence's vibrant paintings, including "Parade" (1960), in "Revolutions."

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Image credit: Jacob Lawrence, "Parade," 1960. Tempera and graphite pencil on fiberboard. ©The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Lee Stalsworth, digitally retouched by Cathy Carver 7-21-2016.

09/03/2026

All good things x come to an end. Before "Basquiat x Banksy" closes on Monday, September 7, we have one more weekend to take in its magic. Good thing it's a long one. Drop in and you'll understand how artists speak to one another across space and time. And, if you can join us on Friday, September 4 between noon-1PM, Adrian Loving aka will tune us in.

Artist, author, scholar and DJ, Loving will lead a free gallery encounter, "Musical Soundscapes: From Hip Hop to Trip Hop" that invites us to consider just how the sounds of Brooklyn and Bristol shaped the upbrings and output of these creative giants. Meet at the Welcome Desk at noon, and we'll head down to the galleries.

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