Hirshhorn Museum Collection Tops 13,000 as Major 50th-Anniversary Acquisitions Announced
10May 14, 2026
TheHirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardenin Washington, DC, acquired 314 works in 2025,Artnewsreports. The year followed the fiftieth anniversary of the institution, which was established under the aegis of the Smithsonian in 1974. Theacquisitionsbrought the museum’s collection to 13,000 pieces and increased its holdings in areas it had sought to build up.
“There has been a deliberate effort over the last few years to deepen certain areas of the Hirshhorn collection, particularly photography, mixed media practices, and the artists who are defining American visual culture includingMarilyn Minter,Lorna Simpson, andMickalene Thomas,” museum director Melissa Chiu told Artnews. “What made 2025 significant was that those priorities converged with the momentum of the Hirshhorn’s fiftieth anniversary.”
Among the acquisitions specifically connected to the anniversary are Simpson’s 2025 Vista, a large-scale mixed-media work; Sarah Sze’s monumental sculptural painting High Tide,2025; and Thomas’s nearly eleven-foot wide canvas Interior: Zebra with Two Chairs and Funky Fur (2012). All were gifts to the Hirshhorn.
Photographs acquired by the museum include documentary works by Graciela Iturbide and Danny Lyon, as well as nine photographs by Ezra Stoller documenting the Hirshhorn’s 1974 opening, and nineteen gelatin silver prints and a drawing by photographer Joel-Peter Witkin.
The museum additionally received 176 works by Adam Pendleton. Donated by collectors Doug and Toni Gordon as part of a larger multiyear gift, the works will serve as the basis of an archive of works on paper by Pendleton, additionally comprising hundreds of spray-paint studies and screen-printed compositions the artist made between 2019 and 2023.
Other notable acquisitions included works by Mark Bradford and Thomas Houseago, as well as thirteen contemporary Chinese works.