When the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden reopened on Saturday, Oct. 31, a person walking along the National Mall could see into it from the path. That view was one of the last things decided. In December 2021, the National Capital Planning Commission approved a plan that kept Gordon Bunshaft's inner partition wall where he put it, in its original aggregate concrete, but lowered it "to allow people on the Mall to look into the garden." That wall is the clearest example of something true across the whole 1.3-acre garden. Hiroshi Sugimoto's redesign is laid over Bunshaft's 1974 plan and Lester Collins's 1981 changes. Where those layers meet, you can see what the public review process let him change and what it held in place.
The garden is free and open daily, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., between the Arts and Industries Building and the National Air and Space Museum. An unhurried weekend visit goes better if you know which wall belongs to whom.
Three authors in a sunken garden
Bunshaft's 1974 garden was a sunken room off the Mall, built of the same Brutalist aggregate concrete as the drum-shaped museum across Jefferson Drive. NCPC's 2019 review listed its defining features: the sunken plan, the concrete perimeter and partition walls, the reflecting pool, the stairs and the sculpture-display setting.
Lester Collins reworked it in 1981. He kept Bunshaft's reflecting pool and lateral stairs and added ramps on the north side, shaded plantings, and a sequence of paths and gallery-like areas. In May 2019, the Cultural Landscape Foundation warned that the federal review record treated 1974 as the garden's only period of significance and discounted Collins's work. Later that month, as TCLF reported, the DC Historic Preservation Office advised the Smithsonian to reassess Collins's work.
Sugimoto is the third author. He led the redesign with his Tokyo firm, New Material Research Laboratory, in association with Brooklyn-based YUN Architecture. Quinn Evans of Washington was architect of record, and Rhodeside & Harwell of Alexandria handled the planting and site design. His most visible addition is the dry-stacked stone walls, hand-cut from 950 tons of stone, that divide the garden into outdoor rooms.
What the review rewrote
The first concept went through the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in May 2019. The commission approved it but asked for more work on the new stone walls, the pool and stage, the tree canopy, and documentation of each designer's contribution. A month later, NCPC asked the Smithsonian for a pool alternative that kept Bunshaft's historic dimensions. It supported rebuilding the failing aggregate perimeter walls in kind and said the new stacked-stone walls should stand lower than the concrete ones.
The pool was the hardest issue. In December 2020, according to TCLF's account of the NCPC hearing, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, Docomomo US, the Committee of 100, landscape architect Nancy Slade and the DC Preservation League objected to the plan. They argued that stacked stone and a larger, multi-part pool would break with the garden's aggregate-concrete vocabulary and cut the pool's visual line to the museum's north window. In her written testimony to NCPC, DC Preservation League director Rebecca Miller said that altering the pool would be a significant adverse effect.
The design changed in response. The 2021 scheme kept Bunshaft's pool in its original location, at its original dimensions and in its original material, and heated it year-round. A separate, smaller U-shaped pool went in to its south, sized to roughly match the turf panel it replaced and designed to drain for performance seating. The Smithsonian had first proposed rebuilding the central partition wall in stacked stone. The final plan rebuilt it in aggregate concrete with its top 3 feet 6 inches above the grade of the north allée. The Commission of Fine Arts gave final approval on July 15, 2021, and NCPC followed on Dec. 2, 2021.
At that meeting, NCPC Chair Beth White said:
"I also appreciate the Smithsonian's efforts to preserve the sunken nature of the garden, maintain the space with galleries to view art, and perhaps most importantly, the reintroduction of the underground tunnel connection which has been lost for many decades."
Her remarks appear in NCPC's announcement of the final approval.
A field guide to the walls and water
This table sorts what you will see by who designed it and what the review decided.
Element | Original author | What was decided | What you see now |
|---|---|---|---|
Entry from the Mall | Bunshaft | Restored to its full width after being narrowed | A 60-foot-wide "front door" on the Mall |
Perimeter retaining walls | Bunshaft | NCPC backed in-kind replacement of failing walls | Rebuilt to match the original concrete |
Inner partition wall | Bunshaft | First proposed in stone; built in aggregate concrete instead | Same location, lowered to 3'6" so the Mall can see in |
Reflecting pool | Bunshaft, kept by Collins | Original location, dimensions and material kept | Heated year-round at the center of the garden |
U-shaped second pool | Sugimoto | Made smaller during review | Drains to become seating around a stage |
Stacked-stone walls | Sugimoto | Kept lower than the concrete walls | Outdoor rooms in the East Galleries |
Underground passage | Bunshaft | NCPC supported reopening it | Sugimoto's stainless-steel Passage of Reflectance |
Ramps and shade planting | Collins | Priorities kept, circulation reworked | Gently sloped paths and a ramp moved to the west |
Quinn Evans' account of the reopening says the restored concrete walls were rebuilt to match the original's material and appearance, using newer techniques meant to make them last much longer. The firm says the passage under Jefferson Drive, closed to the public in the 1980s, is now more open to the garden than before. Some of the work is hidden. Rain filters through the planting beds into two 15,000-gallon underground cisterns and is reused for irrigation, which addresses the sunken garden's long-standing flooding problem. The project is on track for SITES Gold certification.
A walk that follows the layers
The garden is now organized into three areas: an open West Gallery for events and temporary installations, a Central Gallery with a stage surrounded by water, and an East Gallery made up of viewing rooms. This order takes in all three, along with the original and new walls:
- Enter from the Mall. You come in through Bunshaft's restored 60-foot opening. Look back over the lowered inner wall to the Mall, a view the 2021 approval protected.
- Stop at the Central Galleries. Bunshaft's heated pool sits beside Sugimoto's drainable one. This area is also the entry and exit for the reopened passage.
- Turn east into the stone rooms. Rodin's The Burghers of Calais and Monument to Balzac are here, along with all four of Matisse's bronze reliefs, The Backs I–IV. Five Moores and two Hepworths reflect Joseph Hirshhorn's friendships with both artists, and four David Smith works stand together in a central planting bed.
- Continue to the West Lawn. Yoshitomo Nara's Sentinels of Stillness, three monumental sculptures curated by Anne Reeve, is the first presentation on the new lawn and stays through Nov. 7, 2027. Around it are recent acquisitions by Raven Halfmoon, Lauren Halsey and Liz Larner. Yoko Ono's Wish Tree for Washington, DC, a Japanese dogwood where visitors tie handwritten wishes for peace, is back in the garden.
- Leave through the passage. Passage of Reflectance lines Bunshaft's tunnel in reflective stainless steel and rises to the museum plaza.
The garden and plaza now hold 60 artworks, which the Smithsonian counts as a 50 percent increase over the previous installation. Thirty-nine come from Joseph Hirshhorn's personal collection, including 21 first installed in 1974. That means more than a third of what you see outdoors stood in Bunshaft's original garden. Those pieces are now set among Sugimoto's walls, around a pool the review kept in place.
Extending the afternoon this month
The indoor museum keeps different hours from the garden. It opens at noon on Mondays and at 10 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Ten blocks north, at 401 F Street NW, the National Building Museum hosts CANstruction from Nov. 22 to 30. In this design-build competition, organized by the Washington Architectural Foundation, teams build U.S. monuments and landmarks from canned food in the Great Hall. The museum has scheduled its "Brick City" exhibition of Warren Elsmore's LEGO architecture to reopen Friday, Nov. 27, after a refresh. Exhibition tickets are $10 for adults and $7 for youth and seniors, and the museum is open Thursday through Monday.
For more modernist buildings around the city, our guide to iconic modern residential architecture in DC works as a companion to this walk. Our essay on recognizing the original asks the same question about original work and later layers inside a private home.
At the Hirshhorn, the Mall spent two years deciding which parts of Bunshaft's design would stay and how Sugimoto's work would sit beside them. Owners of architect-designed homes make the same kind of decision on a smaller scale whenever they renovate or sell. If you own a modern house whose original walls, materials and sightlines matter to you, listModern can help you present that history to buyers who will value it. Sell a modern home with a team that knows which wall is Bunshaft's.
