Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960

To inaugurate its 50th-anniversary season, the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presents Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960, a major survey of artwork made during a transformative period characterized by new currents in science and philosophy and ever-increasing mechanization. In its first rotation, it presents 208 artworks in the Museum’s permanent collection by 117 artists—including Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Lee Krasner, Wifredo Lam, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock—made during 100 turbulent and energetic years.

The exhibition includes contemporary work by 19 artists, such as Torkwase Dyson, Annette Lemieux, Genesis Tramane, Dyani White Hawk, and Flora Yukhnovich, whose practices demonstrate how many revolutionary ideas and approaches arising during these 100 years remain critical today. Organized by Hirshhorn Associate Curator Marina Isgro and Assistant Curator Betsy Johnson, Revolutions will fill the Museum’s second-floor outer-circle galleries from March 22, 2024, to January 3, 2027, including a series of rotations, the first of which debuted January 18, 2025 with 50 new works. 

Revolutions spotlights the rush of art-historical movements and genres that characterized the arc of Modernism and the ascendancy of abstraction, notably through the work of artists interested in engaging the mind, not just the eye. This breadth was evident in Joseph Hirshhorn’s founding gifts to the Museum. An industrialist, collector, and philanthropist, Hirshhorn donated nearly 6,000 works—including a significant number of sculptures—in anticipation of the Museum’s opening on October 4, 1974, and 6,400 more upon his death in 1981. Together these gifts constitute one of the most important collections of postwar American and European art in the world. Today, the Hirshhorn collection comprises more than 13,130 artworks. 

Revolutions takes a primarily chronological approach to historical movements, pausing occasionally to introduce contemporary works that serve as throughlines.