Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960
Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960 is a large-scale survey marking the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s 50th-anniversary season. It presents 208 works by 122 artists from a period shaped by new scientific and philosophical ideas, increasing mechanization, shifting cultural conditions, Modernism, abstraction, and rapidly changing artistic movements. The exhibition is arranged largely chronologically in the museum’s second-floor Outer Ring galleries.
Alongside major works from the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection, the exhibition includes contemporary artists whose practices show how the period’s experimental ideas continue to influence art today. Many of the historic works came to the Smithsonian through founding donor Joseph H. Hirshhorn, whose gifts helped establish one of the world’s important collections of postwar American and European art.
When: March 22, 2024–November 1, 2026
Venue: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, second-floor Outer Ring galleries
Tickets: Price not available
Artists: The exhibition includes works by Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Lee Krasner, Wifredo Lam, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Berenice Abbott, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, David Alekhuogie, Hurvin Anderson, Alexander Archipenko, Hans (Jean) Arp, George Christian Ault, Milton Avery, Giacomo Balla, Daniel Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné, Castera Bazile, George Wesley Bellows, Rigaud Benoit, Thomas Hart Benton, Dawoud Bey, Charles Biederman, Oscar Bluemner, Amoako Boafo, Constantin Brancusi, Cecily Brown, Joan Brown, Alexander Calder, Cang Xin, Emily Carr, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, Joseph Cornell, Carlotta Corpron, Ralston Crawford, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Stuart Davis, Roy DeCarava, Dorothy Dehner, Willem de Kooning, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Richard Diebenkorn, Burgoyne Diller, Arthur G. Dove, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Torkwase Dyson, Thomas Eakins, Max Ernst, Aleksandra Exster, Helen Frankenthaler, Yun Gee, Alberto Giacometti, Julio González, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, George Grosz, Grace Hartigan, Marsden Hartley, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Barbara Hepworth, Auguste Herbin, Hans Hofmann, Loie Hollowell, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Thomas Houseago, Hector Hyppolite, Jasper Johns, Rashid Johnson, Wassily Kandinsky, Barbara Kasten, Franz Kline, Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz, Jacob Lawrence, Fernand Léger, Nadia Khodossievitch Léger, Annette Lemieux, El Lissitzky, Morris Louis, Rick Lowe, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Sally Mann, Reginald Marsh, André Masson, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Joan Mitchell, László Moholy-Nagy, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Grandma Moses, Gabriele Münter, Elie Nadelman, Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Alice Neel, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Aliza Nisenbaum, Catherine Opie, Gordon Parks, Nicolas Party, Paul Pfeiffer, Ann Pibal, Horace Pippin, Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Larry Rivers, Auguste Rodin, John Singer Sargent, Gino Severini, Ben Shahn, David Smith, Leon Polk Smith, Janet Sobel, Joseph Stella, Joel Sternfeld, Clyfford Still, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rufino Tamayo, Pavel Tchelitchew, Alma Thomas, Joaquín Torres-García, Genesis Tramaine, Cy Twombly, Lesley Vance, Édouard Vuillard, Abraham Walkowitz, Dyani White Hawk, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Flora Yukhnovich, and Zao Wou-Ki.
Contemporary dimension: The permanent collection works by 19 contemporary artists include Abraham Cruzvillegas, Torkwase Dyson, Annette Lemieux, Joel Sternfeld, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Genesis Tramaine, and Flora Yukhnovich, among others.
On-view note: Artists marked by the museum with an asterisk are no longer on view. Artists marked with two asterisks were added on January 17, 2026.
Curators: Organized by Hirshhorn Curator Marina Isgro and Assistant Curator Betsy Johnson, with assistance from former Curatorial Assistant Alice Phan.
Design: The exhibition was designed by Paris-based exhibition specialists Studio Adrien Gardère.
Programs: Free public programs accompany the exhibition, including an artist talk held March 22, 2024, and a 50th-birthday celebration held October 4, 2024.
Audio tour: Katy Hessel’s free, nine-stop “Museums Without Men” audio tour focuses on nine women artists represented in the exhibition. Featured stops include Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Exter’s Constructivist marionette, a monochromatic abstraction by Lee Krasner, and a painting by Flora Yukhnovich. The tour is available through the Hirshhorn website and Hirshhorn Eye, the museum’s smartphone guide, throughout the exhibition.
Media: The exhibition page provides related artist videos featuring Amoako Boafo on art and portraiture, Catherine Opie on and around America, Paul Pfeiffer on art and spectacle, Loie Hollowell on art and the female body, Aliza Nisenbaum on art and community, Rick Lowe on community, and an artist talk with Dyani White Hawk.
Accessibility: An accessibility brochure is available, with printed copies and a braille version provided at the museum.
Collection background: Joseph H. Hirshhorn donated nearly 6,000 works, including a significant number of sculptures, in preparation for the museum’s opening on October 4, 1974. A further 6,400 works were donated after his death in 1981. The Hirshhorn collection now contains more than 13,130 artworks.
Support: The exhibition is supported by a grant from The Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, with major support from Véronique and Marshall Parke and the John and Barbara Vogelstein Foundation. Additional funding comes from the Hirshhorn International Council and Hirshhorn Collectors’ Council.