Hirshhorn Museum Sculpture Garden

The Hirshhorn Museum's 1.3-acre Sculpture Garden on the National Mall, originally designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in 1974, has been transformed by artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto with his New Material Research Laboratory, with Quinn Evans as architect of record, at 700 Independence Avenue SW, open since October 2026.

The project, the largest renovation of the campus since the museum opened, expands entrances from two to five, including a restored 60-foot-wide entrance from the Mall, and nearly doubles the outdoor collection from 35 to nearly 60 works, including 21 from the original installation. The long-closed passage beneath Jefferson Drive returns as Sugimoto's Passage of Reflectance, lined with polished stainless steel walls. New features include three overlooks, a West Lawn Gallery for monumental commissions, an expanded reflecting pool with a stage inspired by Noh theater, galleries built from roughly 950 tons of hand-stacked Massachusetts stone, and 57 new trees with about 30,000 largely native plants. Admission is free.