Project Proposal

Here is the proposal that I just wrote for my final project. The presentation is due in three weeks, and the paper in four. Let's hope it works out!


Avant-Garde at the Hirshhorn: Cutting Edge or Behind the Curve?

Since opening in 1974, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has been the beacon of international modern and contemporary art for the Smithsonian Museum. With a collection of over 14,000 works from renowned artists such as Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Willem de Kooning, Sol LeWitt, Anneé Olofsson, Joan Miró, and Dan Flavin, the Hirshhorn has served as a forum for artistic and intellectual dialogue, inquiry, and presentation over the past thirty-three years. Benefactor Joseph H. Hirshhorn donated his extensive and incredibly sought after collection to the Smithsonian, and an Act of Congress established the Museum as a part of the Institution in 1966. Hirshhorn’s collection of exquisite sculpture and paintings helped lay the groundwork for the creation and continual refinement of a space devoted completely to contemporary works. But the question remains: is the Hirshhorn, as seen through its exhibitions and presentations throughout history, on the cutting edge of the contemporary art world, or does it merely act as a showcase for what had recently been coined “avant-garde?”

Before delving into the posed question regarding the Hirshhorn’s exhibition history, one must first define what is meant by the word “avant-garde.” The word comes from the French language and in its most base form means “front guard,” or “vanguard.” However, the word has been appropriated to refer to the experimental nature of a subject, idea, or media, mostly pertaining to the arts. When discussing what it means to be avant-garde, one hears words like, “unorthodox,” “daring,” or “radical,” which present an edgy side to innovation. Does this mean that any new artistic, literary, or musical material that is produced is necessarily avant-garde? Absolutely not. In order to be authentically avant-garde, a work must push the boundaries of art, and by extension the public’s concept of what is art. Avant-garde art is most certainly tied to time and history, in that works that had once been considered daringly innovative are now in the canon of the contemporary.

To get a sense of the avant-garde, look at the work of Pablo Picasso or Marcel Duchamp. Picasso was one of the leaders of the Cubist movement of the early twentieth century, which sought to deconstruct representational portrait techniques by painting a subject from multiple points of view. Planes and angles intersect, objects within the subject are dissected, and most pieces of the work are rearranged, and hence recontextualized. The reason for doing this was to spark the discussion of paradigm and point of view—obviously a piece, scene, or subject can be seen from multiple viewpoints, but what happens when these views penetrate each other? By reordering the elements of the painting, does it bring clarity to the subject in a larger context? And then in 1917, Marcel Duchamp employed a urinal from a public men’s restroom, laid it on its side and displayed it as a piece of art. Why is this radical, daring, or innovative? It challenged the conventions of art and its conceptualization. The important aspect of the avant-garde that one must remember is that it represents the novel within its relative context.

US Cartoonist Al Capp once said, “[Abstract art] is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.” Utilizing this logic, Joseph Hirshhorn was simply a man with too much money and too little knowledge, thereby motivated by a force that made him spend lavishly and with abandon. It negates the idea that Joseph Hirshhorn was actually a rather educated, thorough and thoughtful collector of international modern and contemporary art. Starting out collecting French Impressionist pieces, he soon moved to start collecting works by living artists throughout America and Europe. Also, what distinguishes Mr. Hirshhorn from many of his collecting contemporaries is the fact that he would build relationships with young artists, and then would buy out all of their exhibited works in gallery shows. This motion to buy each piece could be interpreted as carelessness; however, Mr. Hirshhorn saw incredibly potential and promise from these artists, so he was hoping for two things: first, that they would be better off financially so that they could continue creating, and secondly that when they became famous he would be the owner of many of the coveted works. While this didn’t always work, it is how we have such a large amount of works by luminaries of the past century.

My project is going to look at three facets of the avant-garde in relation to the Hirshhorn Museum. First, I want to examine Joseph Hirshhorn’s role in selecting these pieces that he thought were innovative and radical. I plan on conducting interviews with the head librarian, sculpture conservator Lee Aks, and hopefully registrar Barbara Freund. By focusing in on Mr. Hirshhorn’s relationship to the avant-garde will, I believe, lead to many interesting discoveries in regards to the early exhibitions at the Museum.

The next phase of the project will look at the first four years of exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum. It will proceed from the Inaugural Exhibition (10/4/74 – 5/12/76) to the Louis M. Eilshemius exhibition (11/9/78 – 1/1/79). I will only examine the exhibitions that were organized by the Hirshhorn Museum, because that will give a good look into the minds and ideas of the early curators. While I would love to be able to examine the non-Hirshhorn organized exhibitions, I do not think they will yield as fruitful information as the internally driven exhibitions. Even so, I will make a point to mention them and give a quick overview, because otherwise it would create an incomplete portrait of the first four years of the Hirshhorn Museum’s exhibition calendar.

The last phase of this project will focus on the exhibitions of the last four years at the Hirshhorn. It will begin with the Hirshhorn-organized “Gyroscope” exhibition. This exhibition celebrated the Museum’s permanent collection and included exhibition titles, “Why do some artists use universal symbols?” “How can an artwork exist in more than one place at once?” “How are bronze sculptures made?” and “Why do many artists work without color?” For this part, I will try to conduct interviews with current curators Kerry Brougher, Anne Ellegood, Kristen Hileman, Valerie Fletcher and Milena Kalinovska. Also, I will try to email and get in touch with Professor Alan Wallach from the W&M Art History Department, as well as his wife, who had been a curator at the Hirshhorn for quite some time. Also, I look forward to talking with my editor Vanessa Mallory, web specialist Jennifer Wentz, graphic designer Bob Allen, communications director Gabriel Riera, and my immediate supervisor Gabriel Einsohn to get a better look at how the Museum portrays itself through marketing and the internet. By doing this I will get a better sense as to the art historical reasons behind the exhibitions, and then the ways in which the Museum wants to present itself publicly.

Throughout these phases I will make sure to retain the focus of refining, defining, evaluating, and analyzing the role of the avant-garde to the art works and exhibitions. I am especially interested in seeing two types of exhibitions: retrospectives and brand new shows. For example, the “Ana Mendieta” exhibition that ran from late 2004 into early 2005 looked specifically at the work of her career from 1972 until 1985. However, the recent “Directions—Virgil Marti and Pae White” was an exhibition where two contemporary artists were invited to transform the Hirshhorn lobby with new artwork. One of the questions that I hope to tackle is this: can works in a retrospective be seen of as avant-garde in the present, or are they only historically avant-garde? Because the nature of the avant-garde is temporal, can it extend a short time period and still be totally significant? These questions will be focused through the lens of the Hirshhorn Museum, and I look forward to understanding the presentation and distribution of modern and contemporary art over the past thirty years in Washington, DC.