Today (27 February), two weeks after the deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC announced new dates for the staging of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s site-specific projection on the exterior of its building, which shows a pair of anonymous hands brandishing a massive revolver and an illuminated candle. The 1988 work, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. 1988-2000, will now be shown on the museum’s facade for three nights from 7-9 March, where it will inevitably read like a commentary on gun culture and violence in the US.
The Hirshhorn shut down the installation, which coincides with its exhibition Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s (until 13 May), after news broke of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on 14 February, “out of respect for those affected, and in sensitivity to our public”, it said on its website. The museum and Wodiczko together made the decision to re-stage the work in March. The Polish artist is due to come to Washington for the re-staging.
In January, when the museum initially announced its plans to reinstall the work—which had not been shown since 1988—the artist said in an eerily appropriate statement: “The 30-year-old projection appears to me today strangely familiar and at once unbearably relevant.”
