The Hirshhorn

On three consecutive evenings—to the strains of “Prelude for a Great Occasion,” especially commissioned from composer William Schuman, and before a select audience of 15,000, all certified members of Washington’s political and social elite plus a smattering of artists, museum directors, dealers and dues-paying Smithsonian Associates —the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden finally opened. Located on the Washington Mall, across from the National Gallery, its sole function, at least to date, is to display the art collection of a single individual, Latvian-born financier Joseph H. Hirshhorn. From the beginning, this project has been a controversial one, greeted by a variety of prognostications of gloom and doom with only occasional notes of optimism. Now, at long last, the chips are down. And those who came to scoff, sneer, and otherwise indulge in Schadenfreude are mostly having to eat their words.

Certainly there was reason for misgiving. For one thing, when he offered his collection to the nation in 1966, no one, not Mr. Hirshhorn himself nor his curator, Abram Lerner (now director of the new museum), was sure what it comprised; it was so vast and had grown so fast that most of it was in storage. True, the public had been given an inkling of its magnitude in 1962, when 444 examples of its sculpture holdings were exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum to loud critical hosannas—but since then only a chosen few had examined it. Thus when Mr. Hirshhorn, a rags-to-riches uranium millionaire, announced his gift, he was met with less than wild excitement.

RB

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Ruth Berenson

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On three consecutive evenings—to the strains of “Prelude for a Great Occasion,” especially commissioned from composer William Schuman, and before a select audience of 15,000, all certified members of Washington’s political and social elite plus a smattering of artists, museum directors, dealers and dues-paying Smithsonian Associates —the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden finally opened. Located on the Washington Mall, across from the National Gallery, its sole function, at least to date, is to display the art collection of a single individual, Latvian-born financier Joseph H. Hirshhorn. From the beginning, this project has been a controversial one, greeted by a variety of prognostications of gloom and doom with only occasional notes of optimism. Now, at long last, the chips are down. And those who came to scoff, sneer, and otherwise indulge in Schadenfreude are mostly having to eat their words.

Certainly there was reason for misgiving. For one thing, when he offered his collection to the nation in 1966, no one, not Mr. Hirshhorn himself nor his curator, Abram Lerner (now director of the new museum), was sure what it comprised; it was so vast and had grown so fast that most of it was in storage. True, the public had been given an inkling of its magnitude in 1962, when 444 examples of its sculpture holdings were exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum to loud critical hosannas—but since then only a chosen few had examined it. Thus when Mr. Hirshhorn, a rags-to-riches uranium millionaire, announced his gift, he was met with less than wild excitement.