Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Presents Major Retrospective of Louise Bourgeois - Washington D.C.

Louise Bourgeois, "Knife Woman" (Femme Couteau), 2002, Dr. Gianfranco and Monica D'Amato, Naples/Paris. Photo: Christopher Burke

February 26 - May 17, 2009

The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presents a major retrospective of the works of Louise Bourgeois from February 26 through May 17. Bourgeois, a leading figure in 20th century art, was born in Paris in 1911 and has lived in New York since 1938. The exhibition will fill the museum’s second-level galleries with over 120 works, primarily sculptural pieces, along with paintings and drawings. The last venue on a five-city world tour, the presentation at the Hirshhorn has been expanded to include five more major sculptures. Among them is the large “Crouching Spider” (2003). The nearly nine-foot-tall bronze-and-steel spider has already been installed outside the museum’s entrance, acting as an imposing greeter.

Throughout her 70-year career, Bourgeois has drawn upon personal memories to develop complex meditations on such universal themes as personal identity, family relationships and the power of art to express deeply felt emotions. Her materials range from traditional plaster, bronze, marble and wood to resin, latex, glass, rubber and electric lights, along with found objects such as toy dolls and old furniture and clothes. Bourgeois has an idiosyncratic aesthetic and has adapted and interpreted diverse ideas and styles from Europe and America, notably Surrealism, primitivism, psychoanalysis, conceptualism and feminism.

This is the opportunity to appreciate works from different moments of her artistic trajectory, such as: “Femme Maison” (1945-47); “Torso, Self Portrait” (1963-64); “The Destruction of the Father” (1974; “Spiral Woman” (1984); “Legs” (1986); “Arch of Hysteria” (1993); “Spider” (1997) and the “Cell” series.

The exhibition invites viewers to let their imaginations run wild, to intuit and invent meanings of their own. In today’s world of instantaneous information, this is a rare opportunity to revel in an intriguing domain of mystery, ambiguity, symbols and double meanings.? 

“Louise Bourgeois” was organized by the Hirshhorn in association with Tate Modern, London, and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

Further information, www.hirshhorn.si.edu