Visiting Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC

One of the many museums displayed around the National Mall in Washington DC is the Hirshhorn Museum. Part of the Smithsonian Institute, this museum is an art museum that features contemporary artwork that will entertain visitors and help visitors gain a visual eye. The museum is inside a building that has a circular infrastructure and has three floors.

When we first arrived here, we saw a display of a rock character that apparently “fell” onto a black car in front of the entrance.

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Once we went in, we saw the massive crowds of visitors figuring out where to go. After we got our items checked in with security, we were ready to explore. The great thing about this museum is it’s certainly free for everyone (note: lots of museums in DC are free, take advantage of them!).

We admired this wall displaying a variety of different pretty orchids. All the little spaces took shape of the size of the different orchids.

We then went upstairs and saw the work of Barbara Kruger called Belief+Doubt. It’s a whole floor with a multiple-colored block pattern and zoomed words. Her photo-montage work apparently has a theme on money, power, and belief.

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On the same floor was the museum’s gift store. We saw a number of cool merchandise that they were selling including merchandise based on the work of the famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, art books by artists, fun toys for kids, and fun-loving designed items like these camera lens mugs.

On the floor above was Yayoi Kasuma’s attraction. Unfortunately due to the large volume of people who come to see her artwork everyday, we weren’t able to check out her work. Tickets to see her work should be reserved in advanced for a certain time period, even though they are free! If you haven’t heard about her, she’s a well-known (and most-buzzed-about-on-social-media) artist who has a mental disorder and started creating artwork based on her hallucinations. She is known for repetitive polka dots on things and for her “Infinity Rooms” (which I have yet to experience).

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I did see quick glimpses from outside her rooms like this one I took. Hehe.

On the same floor, we walked into a series of rooms featuring suspended animations. They were animations featured on multiple screens across the rooms or one screen centered in a room. Some of these animations would tell stories about how our digital age has came to be and to grasp onto the understanding of humans’ conscious minds surrounding the perceptions of things.

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This is from I Am The Mouth animation by Agnieszka Polska.

We stumbled upon repetitive art work in the halls of the floors. Just like this:

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On the top and last floor, we discovered more sculpture work and paintings.

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Statue heads on top of statue heads
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Boulders with a phrase in German; in English, it means “Remembrance of my youth in in the mountains”

This museum has so many visually striking artwork and it’s worth a visit, especially if you get lucky to see Yayoi Kasuma’s rooms! I just love trippy things and getting lost in them so I was disappointed to miss a huge feature of the museum.

On our way out to Hirshhorn Museum, we also saw this interesting structure with metal plates swirling by the direction of the winds nearby.

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