Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden reopens on October 31: Hiroshi Sugimoto’s redesign brings 50% more works outdoors

The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden in Washington will reopen on October 31, after a complete landscape redesign by Japanese artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. As Artsy reports, this is the most significant rethinking of the garden since American modernist architect Gordon Bunshaft conceived the museum’s distinctive cylindrical building and the sunken sculpture garden more than half a century ago — the garden opened to the public in 1974, while in 1981 landscape architect Lester Collins added lawns, trees and additional spaces.

The centrepiece of Sugimoto’s intervention is a series of monumental stacked-stone walls that divide the landscape into a sequence of distinct but interconnected spaces: the East and Central Gardens and the West Lawn. The stone provides an elemental counterpoint to Bunshaft’s concrete architecture and a restrained backdrop for sculptures spanning more than a century. Thanks to the redesign, the garden will display 50% more outdoor artworks, while around 24 major sculptures from Joseph H. Hirshhorn’s Founding Gift — among them works by Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti and Barbara Hepworth — return to view, placed in dialogue with living artists and new commissions, and not as a chronological survey.

A wider “front door” will create ground-level views into the garden from the National Mall, with five entry points, new vantage points to the east and west, twice as many accessible entrances and more shade and seating — making the once-enclosed space far more open. An underground passage will reconnect the garden directly with the museum, creating a physical route between the galleries, Sugimoto’s landscape and the Mall. According to the Washington Post, the project also includes a renovated reflecting pool.

The reopening will also launch a rotating exhibition programme, centred on Yoshitomo Nara’s large aluminium figures. Sugimoto’s design extends his long relationship with the Hirshhorn, Artsy writes: it was the first museum to devote a major retrospective to his work, and in 2018 it invited him to rethink the museum’s lobby.