Reports of the Museums and Research Institutes 



43 



painting" as the Washington Post put it, the museum hosted 

 "A Celebration of Art," a glittering fund-raising gala under 

 a tent on the Hirshhorn plaza on October 13, 1999. Nearly 

 500 guests, including more than 30 nationally known 

 artists, heard remarks by Olga Hirshhorn, Smithsonian Sec- 

 retary I. Michael Heyman, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 

 Board chairman Robert Lehrman, and Director James T. 

 Demetrion. Honorary Co-Chairs of the event were First Lady 

 Hillary Rodham Clinton and Lady Bird Johnson, whose hus- 

 band, President Lyndon B. Johnson, was instrumental in 

 bringing Joseph Hirshhorn 's extraordinary private collection 

 to the Smithsonian and the American people. Many artists 

 whose work is included in the museum's permanent collec- 

 tion were invited to attend a White House tea held the day 

 previous to the gala and heard Mrs. Clinton praise the 

 Hirshhorn Museum as a gift to the Nation that had "stood 

 the test of time." The significant funds raised during the 

 evening were earmarked to support the museum's first-rate 

 exhibitions and public programs. 



The Hirshhorn further commemorated its anniversary 

 year with the major exhibition "Regarding Beauty: A View 

 of the Late Twentieth Century," on exhibit October 7, 1999 

 through January 17, 2000. This subtly nuanced, thematic 

 presentation of late twentieth-century art featured a spec- 

 trum of responses to the timeless concept of beauty. Eighty- 

 eight paintings, sculptures, drawings, mixed-media works, 

 and installations revealed how corporeal and abstract beauty 

 has been questioned, commented on, or reconsidered by 36 

 international artists. 



Among the show's many highlights were reinterpreted 

 icons from art history by Michelangelo Pistoletto and Yasu- 

 masa Morimura; nudes by Lucian Freud and Pablo Picasso 

 that uproot tradition; faces and figures by Cindy Sherman 

 and Mariko Mori that reflect media saturation; landscape- 

 based paintings that evoke the sublime by Agnes Martin and 

 Gerhard Richter; sensuous fabric and silk-flower installa- 

 tions by Beverly Semmes and Jim Hodges, respectively; and 

 environments of light by James Turrell and Felix Gonzalez- 

 Torres. A media-arts gallery, featuring video works and 

 documentation by some 20 additional artists, was included 

 within the exhibition. Organized by Neal Benezra, assistant 

 director for art and public programs, and Olga M. Viso, asso- 

 ciate curator, the exhibition traveled to the Haus der Kunst 

 in Munich, Germany, in February. 



Major support for the exhibition was provided by the 

 Holenia Exhibition Fund in memory of Joseph H. Hirsh- 

 horn; by Robert Lehrman; and by The Hill Family Foun- 

 dation, Inc. Additional funding was provided by Aaron and 

 Barbara Levine and the Phoebe W. Haas Charitable Founda- 

 tion. The 232-page catalog was made possible in part by 

 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. The 

 media-arts gallery was funded by the Peter Norton Family 

 Foundation, and education programs were supported in part 

 by a grant from Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz. Additional assis- 

 tance was provided by the Canadian Embassy, Washington, 

 D.C.; Pro Helvetia, the Arts Council of Switzerland; the 

 Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam; and the Institute for 

 Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany. 



Public programs for "Regarding Beauty" were high- 

 lighted by two panel discussions and an evening lecture 

 series. Sidney Lawrence, head of public affairs, moderated a 

 discussion between the two curators and several artists — 

 including Janine Antoni, Marlene Dumas, Rodney Graham, 

 Jim Hodges, and Pipilotti Rist — represented in the exhibi- 

 tion (October 7). Differing notions of beauty in Western and 

 non- Western art was the subject of a second panel which in- 

 cluded Roslyn Walker, Director of the National Museum of 

 African Art, James Ulak, Curator of Japanese Art at the 

 Arthur M. Sackler/Freer Gallery of Art, and Mark Thistleth- 

 waite, Chair of Art History at Texas Christian University 

 (October 17). An evening series of four lectures featuring no- 

 table critics and art historians commenced October 20 with 

 Dave Hickey, Professor of Art Criticism and Theory at the 

 University of Nevada, Las Vegas presenting "Beauty: Art 

 without Artists." Arthur C. Danto, catalog contributor, 

 art critic for The Nation, and Johnsonian Professor of Philos- 

 ophy Emeritus at Columbia University presented "Artistic 

 Beauty and the Intractable Avant-Garde" where he shared 

 his perspective on questions posed by the exhibition (Octo- 

 ber 27). Camille Paglia, cultural critic and Professor of 

 Humanities at the University of the Atts in Philadelphia 

 gave a thought-provoking lecture titled "The Romance of 

 Beauty," (November 10), which was sponsored by the Hirsh- 

 horn Museum Docents. Due to the great interest in Ms. 

 Paglia's presentation, the lecture was presented in the much- 

 larger Baird Auditorium of the National Museum of Natural 

 History. The final lecture of the series (December 8) was 

 given by Robert Farris Thompson, the Colonel John Trum- 

 bell Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. 

 Professor Thompson, who spoke on the "Aesthetic of Cool" 

 was introduced by Roslyn Walker, director of the National 

 Museum of African Art. His talk was made possible in part 

 by the Buddy Rosenthal Fund for Docent Education and the 

 National Museum of African Art Docent Fund. 



The Hirshhorn's other major exhibitions this year in- 

 cluded "Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing," which opened 

 at the museum in February following its launch at the 

 Walker Art Center of Minneapolis, which organized the show. 

 Well known since the mid-1980s, this American artist 

 has created disturbingly inventive, iconic images that fuse 

 familiarity and dislocation and mine themes of childhood, 

 memory, loss, and sexuality. The Hirshhorn recorded one of 

 the most exceptional exhibition attendance levels in its 

 25— year history with "Dali's Optical Illusions," which was 

 on view April 19 through June 18. The exhibition brought 

 together 68 emblematic and rarely seen works by the flam- 

 boyant Salvador Dali and focused on the artist's longtime 

 preoccupation with optics and visual perception. The show 

 garnered critical and popular acclaim; to handle the crowds, 

 which averaged 2,500 persons per day, the museum devel- 

 oped a system of free, immediate-use passes coordinated by a 

 corps of 73 volunteer monitors. "Ed Ruscha," co-organized 

 by the Hirshhorn and the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, 

 England, brought to Washington the dty wit and subtle cul- 

 tural commentary of this California-based painter in a 

 retrospective of his work. 



