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Conceived as the nation‘s museum of modern and contemporary art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has as its genesis a passion for collecting and for the art of our time. They continue to foster this abiding interest in the contemporary into the twenty-first century. Key artists of the twentieth century-from Picasso and Giacometti to de Kooning and Warhol-are all represented in the collection by fine works of art.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has primarily focused its collection-building and exhibition-planning on the post-World War II period, with particular emphasis on art created during the last 25 years. The flexibility and generosity of Joseph H. Hirshhorn and subsequent benefactors has allowed us to continue acquiring works of art to fine-tune the collection on the one hand, and to forge ahead into new art realms on the other.
They have strived over the years to increase the range of our collection to include internationally significant contemporary works by such artists as the Germans Gerhard Richter and Anselm Kiefer, Juan Muñoz from Spain, Australian-born Ron Mueck, and Rachel Whiteread from England, together with emerging artists who show considerable promise. As never before, the last 25 years have been a time of internationalism and cross-fertilization in the visual arts, developments the Hirshhorn collection will continue to reflect.
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