The Hirshhorn's sculpture garden finally reopens, and it was worth the four-year wait

The Hirshhorn's sculpture garden finally reopens, and it was worth the four-year wait

Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is using that fact well. On October 31, the museum throws open a completely remade outdoor space that has been fenced off from the public since late 2022, four years during which D.C. lost one of its best free lunch-break destinations and gained, slowly, something considerably more interesting than what was there before.

The numbers alone tell part of the story. The project expands entryways, doubles the volume of collection artwork on view in the outdoor galleries, and reconnects the garden to the Hirshhorn Plaza and museum for a more cohesive visitor experience. The revitalized 1.3-acre garden will display nearly 60 sculptures, a 50 percent increase from the previous installation. But square footage and sculpture counts only go so far. What makes this reopening genuinely worth circling is the person the Hirshhorn put in charge of rethinking it.

A Japanese artist-architect on the National Mall

The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden will reopen to the public on Saturday, October 31, after a four-year, mission-driven revitalization. The outdoor galleries have been redesigned by architect-artist Hiroshi Sugimoto in collaboration with the Smithsonian. Sugimoto is best known for his large-format photography, long-exposure seascapes, drive-in movie theaters lit only by the film projected on screen, and his New Material Research Laboratory in Tokyo. He is not the obvious choice for a public infrastructure project on the National Mall. That's exactly why it works.

Sugimoto describes the redesign as a "mission-driven" intervention: the entrance will be tripled in width, new pathways will improve accessibility, and previously obscured views across the garden will be cleared. A key feature will be the reopening of the underground passage connecting the garden to the museum plaza, which will be a "shimmering" space, similar to an immersive artwork, that guides visitors between the two spaces.

That tunnel matters more than it sounds. An underground passage historically connected the garden and plaza before it was closed in the 1980s. For decades, anyone wanting to move between the sunken garden and the circular museum drum had to exit, wait at a crosswalk on Jefferson Drive, and re-enter. The D.C. museum is widening the entryway on the National Mall side and reopening the underground passageway so visitors no longer have to cross Jefferson Drive. That single change reorganizes the entire experience of the campus.

What you'll actually see

Highlights in the first rotation include artworks by Auguste Rodin, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Alberto Giacometti, Willem de Kooning, KAWS, Lauren Halsey, and Raven Halfmoon. The range is deliberately wide. Rodin and Giacometti anchor the east garden with the collection's modernist spine, while newer acquisitions push the conversation forward elsewhere on the grounds.

Among the highlights is a new work by the artist duo Elmgreen and Dragset. Titled "Eight," the monumental sculpture reimagines a familiar backyard swimming pool as an oversized, vertical artwork. It is the kind of piece that makes more sense in person than in description, disorienting, flat-footed, funny in the way that good public sculpture sometimes is.

The inaugural exhibition on the new West Lawn will be "Yoshitomo Nara: Sentinels of Stillness," featuring three new sculptures by the artist. Nara's wide-eyed figures have a cult following that will draw a different crowd than the Rodin devotees, and that overlap is the point. The West Lawn is new territory, a flexible open-field space that didn't exist in the garden's previous configuration.

The project also includes almost 30,000 newly planted trees and plants and restores the previously closed underground passageway connecting the garden with the museum plaza. The project will address long-overdue repairs to infrastructure and expand the number of native plantings in the garden by 70 percent, offering a 150 percent increase in shade and seating. On a July afternoon or a warm October weekend, that shade matters. The old garden had almost none.

Four years in the making, and a leadership transition at the top

Work at the site began in late 2022 with a groundbreaking ceremony presided over by then-first lady Jill Biden. The project is part of a phased revitalization that already replaced the museum building's concrete exterior. It is part of a multi-phased Hirshhorn renovation that has already replaced the building's concrete exterior; interior renovations are next, with a start date yet to be determined.

The reopening also carries a bittersweet note. The campus revitalization has been spearheaded by director Melissa Chiu, who will leave the Hirshhorn at the end of this month to become director of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Chiu has led the museum since 2014, and the sculpture garden project has been the capstone of her tenure here. She will hand it off to her successor on the day it opens to the public.

"Our vision for the Hirshhorn, the only national museum of modern art free and open to the public year-round, champions artists first and foremost," Chiu said. That language, free, year-round, public, is worth holding onto. In a city where the cost of almost everything keeps rising, this 1.3 acres on the Mall remains free to anyone who walks in.

Practical details

The 1.3-acre park will reopen as the easiest-to-access American space for the presentation of outdoor sculpture, time-based artwork and performances, large-scale commissions, public education, dining, and reflection. The museum is at Independence Avenue and 7th Street SW, a short walk from the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station on multiple lines. The institution has also announced free public programs for the sculpture garden's reopening weekend. Specific program times are posted on the museum's official site.

If you come on October 31, wear something warm. The garden is open to the sky, it faces northwest on the Mall, and late October evenings in D.C. are not forgiving. But the reflecting pool catches whatever light is left in the day, and Sugimoto has arranged things so that pool is visible the moment you step through the new, widened entrance from the Mall, the first thing you see rather than the last.

Sources

• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden official site
• Destination DC: Fall 2026 Museum Exhibits & Experiences
• The Art Newspaper: Hirshhorn revamped sculpture garden new acquisitions
• The Washington Post: Hirshhorn sculpture garden to reopen Oct. 31
• Artnet News: The Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden Blooms Again
• Schweitzer Designs: Elmgreen & Dragset's "Eight" at the Hirshhorn
• Hirshhorn press release: SOM | Selldorf Architects appointment