Hanne Darboven (German, b. Munich, 1941), 00-99=No1-2K-20K, 1969-70, Pen and pencil on 138 sheets of paper and loose-leaf binder label, Each 11-5/8 x 8-1/4", Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Photo © Giorgio Colombo, Milano.

Jan Dibbets (Dutch, b. Weert, The Netherlands,1941), The Shortest Day of 1970 Photographed in My House Every 6 Minutes from Sunrise til Sunset, 1970, 80 gelatin silver prints. Photo © Giorgio Colombo, Milano.

Robert Barry (American, b. New York, New York, 1936), Steel Disc Suspended 1/8 in. Above Floor, 1967, Steel disc, nylon string, Dimensions variable; disc 2" diameter x 5/8" high,

Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden
Independence Avenue
at Seventh Street SW
202-633-1000
Washington
The Panza Collection
& Ways of Seeing
October 23-
January 11, 2008

The Hirshhorn Museum recently acquired 39 works from Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, one of the world’s foremost collectors of American and European contemporary art and the namesake of the collection. This exhibition features important artworks from the late 1960s and early 1970s acquired from the collection. Composed of works by an international roster of 16 artists,

This acquisition substantially strengthens the Hirshhorn’s holdings of art from this period. The Panza Collection is organized by associate curator Evelyn Hankins, who has worked closely with Panza on the design and installation of the exhibition. Presented concurrently in several galleries adjacent to the exhibition is the second installment of the museum’s ongoing series Ways of Seeing, curated by Panza and his wife, Giovanna

The Panza Collection features paintings, sculptures, installation art, wall drawings and a film that, as a group, demonstrate the critical premises driving international conceptual, light and space, minimal, and environmental art. At the time these works were created, many artists had begun to reject traditional media and aesthetic concerns. Instead, they redefined art in a much broader manner, from conceptual works that favored ideas over the creation of unique objects to large-scale environments that challenged prevalent notions about the boundaries between an artwork and the surrounding architecture.

With this acquisition, the Hirshhorn joins a select group of museums to which Panza has sold or donated portions of his collection, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The collector prefers to work closely with an institution, helping it to select substantial bodies of work from his collection that create coherent groupings rather than selling individual pieces.

Panza’s approach to collecting is similar to that of the museum’s founding donor, Joseph Hirshhorn, in that they both collected the work of select artists in depth. Panza, moreover, often focused his collecting on a body of work from the most important period an artist’s career. The design of “The Panza Collection” exhibition reflects Panza’s preference for installing galleries that feature the works of a single artist in order to highlight that individual’s accomplishments.

The 16 artists represented in The Panza Collection are Robert Barry, Larry Bell, Hanne Darboven, Jan Dibbets, Hamish Fulton, Douglas Huebler, Robert Irwin, On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Bruce Nauman, Richard Nonas, Roman Opalka, Lawrence Weiner and Doug Wheeler. The acquisition’s highlights include two major installations by Darboven, each comprising more than 130 framed drawings, and a large-scale light installation by Wheeler. The first Kawara works to enter the museum’s collection include three “date” paintings created in a single week in October 1971. Three pieces by Irwin dating between 1963 and 1970—a painted aluminum disc, an acrylic column and a dot painting — provide, along with an acrylic disc already in the Hirshhorn’s collection, an overview of a critical point in Irwin’s early career. Similarly, five early works by Kosuth, including the white neon Self-Defined and the five-part Box, Cube, Empty, Clear, Glass – A Description complement the two works by the artist already owned by the museum, while Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing No. 3 brings the number of LeWitt works in the Hirshhorn’s collection to eight.