Big Things for Big Rooms
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC
November 21, 2025 – July 4, 2027
Light Depth, 1969
Acrylic on canvas; 120 × 900 in. (304.8 × 2286 cm)
Gift from the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art
(Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund), 2018
Tropical Breeze (exterior), 2004.
Installation view, Sneeze to Squeeze, Magasin III, Stockholm, 2013
Single-channel video installation; 3:45 min.
Exterior; 96 × 96 × 240 in. (243.84 × 243.84 × 609.6 cm)
Gift of the Berezdivin Collection, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2024
Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Photo: Christian Saltas
Courtesy the artist, Magasin III, Stockholm; and Hauser and Wirth
Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum will open “Big Things for Big Rooms,” an exhibition tracing the development of immersive large-scale artworks since the late 1960s. The presentation of 10 artworks—five on view for the first time at the Museum—is drawn largely from the Hirshhorn’s collection. “Big Things for Big Rooms” offers a multisensorial examination of how artists create installation works that expand the boundaries of an artwork and the role of the visitor.
“Big Things for Big Rooms” is organized into two parts. The first introduces the development of “Environments,” expansive installations by pioneering artists such as Robert Irwin, whose work defined the Light and Space movement, and Land artist Richard Long. The second half demonstrates how contemporary artists like Paul Chan, Olafur Eliasson, and Mika Rottenberg are expanding upon these foundational ideas in different ways, often using everyday materials.
The exhibition is organized by the Hirshhorn’s head curator, Evelyn C. Hankins, with the support of curatorial assistant CJ Greenhill Caldera.
“This exhibition connects the profound creativity of the 1960s to the contemporary artists who are reshaping our sense of the world and our place in it,” said Museum Director Melissa Chiu. “Presented as a continuum from ‘Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960,’ which inaugurated our 50th-anniversary season, ‘Big Things for Big Rooms’ manifests these essential art-historical developments while demonstrating the significance of installation art in the Hirshhorn’s permanent collection.”
Rooted in artist and critic Allan Kaprow’s groundbreaking 1958 concept of “Environments,” which he defined as artworks that require visitors to actively engage with or even complete them, “Big Things for Big Rooms” begins with the Hirshhorn’s inaugural presentation of Sam Gilliam’s painting “Light Depth” (1969). Sam Gilliam experimented with dynamic, color-washed canvases, or Drapes, removing them from their stretchers and allowing their forms to change in response to each presentation. Extending 75 feet, the sweeping, frameless “Light Depth,” long considered to be Gilliam’s most important Drape, spills from the wall of the Museum’s first gallery, blurring the boundaries among painting, sculpture, and installation art.
Following “Light Depth” are other pioneering works, including Dan Flavin’s “‘monument’ for V. Tatlin” (1967), an arrangement of fluorescent fixtures that deploys light to define the space and involve the visitor. Also on view is Lygia Pape’s “Ttéia 1,A” (1979/2025), a geometric installation of shimmering metallic threads that anticipates the individual’s movement within the gallery.
As the exhibition unfolds, its focus shifts toward contemporary global artists, including Spencer Finch and Eliasson, who are envisioning immersive art for the 21st century. Highlights include recent Hirshhorn acquisitions such as Rottenberg’s “Tropical Breeze” (2004), a gallery-filling shipping container that functions as a screening room, and a recent site-responsive installation by Rashid Johnson, an assembly of objects of personal and cultural resonance (including live plants, books, ceramics, and shea butter) positioned within a minimalist sculptural framework that can be further activated by gatherings, performances, and reflection. The exhibition concludes with Chan’s “3rd Light” (2006), a mesmerizing choreography of digital projection, shadows, and objects exploring themes of transcendence, creation, and cyclical time.
HIRSHHORN MUSEUM
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Independence Ave SW and 7th St SW, Washington, DC 20560
