The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden reopened its sunken garden on the National Mall on October 31, 2026, after a four-year closure and a $68 million redesign by Japanese artist and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto. This is thee free outdoor art stop in DC right now. Let’s go!
Stone Walls Create a Series of Outdoor Rooms
Sugimoto’s hand-stacked stone walls now divide the 1.3-acre site into the East and Central Gardens and the West Lawn, softening Gordon Bunshaft’s 1974 concrete with roughly 30,000 new plants and trees. A long-closed underground passage again links the garden to the museum plaza, and a redesigned reflecting pool can be drained to host performances and public programs.
What to See First in the Garden
Start with Rodin’s The Burghers of Calais, now set in its own stone-walled room where you can sit on a bench and meet the six bronze figures at eye level. Then find Elmgreen & Dragset’s lacquered cyan Eight, which reads like a swimming pool seen from above (no, you can’t jump in), plus Raven Halfmoon’s Dancing at Dusk and a new untitled work by Izumi Kato, as Washingtonian details. Nearly 60 works range from Matisse, Henry Moore, and Barbara Hepworth to KAWS and Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree.
It suits families, first-time Mall visitors, and anyone craving a free hour of art between meetings. Yoshitomo Nara’s Sentinels of Stillness, three monumental white heads, holds the West Lawn through November 7, 2027, so you have time, but the debut buzz is now.
The Hirshhorn sits at Independence Avenue and Seventh Street SW, a short walk from the Smithsonian exit of L’Enfant Plaza Metro. Admission is free. The museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and closed December 25, per the Smithsonian, and the Sculpture Garden page carries current programs and outdoor updates.
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