The Hirshhorn’s new 50th-anniversary celebration rethinks and revitalizes the museum’s permanent collection in a dizzying, must-see show.

“Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960” is a visual feast, and relentless in its scope: there are over 200 artworks by more than 100 artists, all from the Hirshhorn’s impressive vault. You’ll pass by works made by Francis Bacon, Jean Dubuffet, Jacob Lawrence and Grandma Moses, and then immediately confront contemporary artists like Torkwase Dyson, Annette Lemieux and Dyani White Hawk. It’s a joy to know this is the first in a series of 50th-anniversary exhibitions, with subsequent ones set to explore the Hirshhorn collection from 1960 to the present.

This rollercoaster ride through time and genre is a stunner, celebrating the wealth of modernism that the museum is home to. The curation is also out to uproot visitors from the start. Things kick off with a lush portrait by John Singer Sargent, “Mrs. Kate A. Moore” from 1884 facing off with Amoako Boafo’s 2020 “Cobalt Blue Dress.” These two oil on canvas works speak across over a hundred years of art, a dialogue in portraiture held within one room.

The show is, thankfully, not a stuffy anniversary celebration, resting on the museum’s laurels. It isn’t didactic. And somehow, despite its immense scope and ambition, it doesn’t overwhelm. What it is is consistently engaging, and experimental. Early on, portraits are hung salon-style, layering works from Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins and other notable names in the collection. The white walls are popped with intermittent bursts of color to highlight the contemporary pieces that collide and commune with the chronological exploration through art historical-movements. In some rooms you’ll find yourself spinning to explore the paintings and sculptures, unbalanced (in a good way) from the exhibition’s layout.

“The primary narrative thrust of the exhibition is a loosely chronological view of works dating from 1860 to 1960 but we also wanted to incorporate contemporary works to show how artists today continue to engage with and expand upon many of the investigations of the historical artists in the collection,” Betsy Johnson, co-curator with Marina Isgro of “Revolutions,” told The Washington Diplomat in an email. “Studio Adrien Gardère, the Parisian design firm whom we worked with on the design of the exhibition, helped the Hirshhorn team develop the architectural language of the exhibition, which included the brightly colored walls that serve to signal works by contemporary artists.”

“Revolutions” is certainly well-named. It’s a topsy-turvy and electrifying take on the museum’s collection, highlighting a tumultuous span in art history and the world. Lee Krasner’s spectacular 1966 “Siren” sings next to Flora Yukhnovich’s 2022 work, “Lipstick, Lip Gloss, Hickeys Too,” two bold expressions of swirling, dancing abstraction. The breadth and depth of the show is admirable and intense, taking visitors from the subtle silhouette of Edouard Vuillard’s “Grandmother Michaud Seen against the Light (La grande-mère Michaud vue à contre-jour)” made in 1890 to the beauty and mystery of Georgia O’Keeffe’s perspective-shaking “Goat’s Horn with Red” from 1945.

“The Hirshhorn opened in 1974 as a modern art museum,” Hirshhorn Director Melissa Chiu said in a statement. “It has since become a modern and contemporary museum, largely because of Joseph H. Hirshhorn’s vision that his foundational gift should meet the needs of a national museum dedicated to the art of our time. ‘Revolutions’ reminds us that we are connected to an art-historical continuum through engagement with artists, artwork and ideas.”

Weaving through the Hirshhorn’s second-floor outer-circle galleries, everything is in influx: chronology, materials, the world these pieces sprung from. But that’s the only way to try to make sense of everything, too. This exhibition flies from representation to abstraction, back again, and in and out. World wars, political crises and personal encounters shake the artists, and the works on display capture those shifts and fractures. For all of the upheaval and transformation “Revolutions” explores, the curation is never overwhelming. Instead, it’s an invitation: the show calls on visitors to wander—to return—to try to put the pieces together in new, surprising ways.

“Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960” is on view until April 20, 2025.