Hirshhorn Museum Reveals the 51 Institutions to Benefit from Landmark National Loans Program

As part of its celebration of the United States of America’s 250th anniversary, Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden has today announced more details of the country’s largest and most geographically extensive museum loan programme to date. As part of the “50 for 50” initiative, announced earlier this year, the Hirshhorn is partnering with the Art Bridges Foundation to lend American artworks from its collection to one museum in every US state, and Puerto Rico, for three-to five-year periods between 2026 and 2029. The 51 partner institutions for the programme have now been selected.

They were chosen following a review that identified what a statement termed “meaningful” gaps in their collections. Recipients, who will begin receiving loans from December, are not only in metropolitan areas; 30 percent serve populations of fewer than 150,000 people—notably the Brinton Museum at Big Horn, Wyoming, where the population is just 500. Other institutions include the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, the Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in San Juan.

Speaking to Ocula, Hirshhorn director Melissa Chiu explained that only a small percentage of the Hirshhorn Museum’s more than 13,000-strong collection is on view at any given time. The institution is, she said, “interested in expanding access to important artworks by important artists” across the country, as part of its wider mandate to expand public access to American art.

Hirshhorn staff identified a list of more than 250 artworks “ready for long-term loans”, from which each partner institution has chosen. More than 200 pieces currently in storage have been requested from a list of works by artists including Mark Rothko, Georgia O’Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Albert Bierstadt, Arthur Jafa, Willem de Kooning, Yoko Ono and others. “At this stage,” said Chiu, “the enquiries are as broad as our collection.”

“50 for 50” comes at a tumultuous time for many American arts organisations, both financially and ideologically. However, Chiu is confident in the Hirshhorn’s mandate to amplify the voices of artists, and in the ability of masterwork’s to draw a crowd. “There’s no better energy than a busy museum—whether it’s in New York or Big Horn, Montana,” she said.

In a statement, Art Bridges’ chief executive Anne Kraybill expanded on this theme, saying that connecting communities with relevant art is a key tenet of the programme. “Each of [the] 51 museums chose works that connect with their own collections and audiences,” she said.

“A loan in Tacoma looks nothing like one in Savannah. Getting that match right is what makes a Hirshhorn loan meaningful to the people who live there.”

Chui told Ocula that America’s 250th anniversary represents an opportunity for reflection. “Whether the loans on view inspire connections between visual objects, conversations about history, or remind museum-goers across the country that they are artists too, it’s a win,” she said.

“In a world full of screens, important artworks hold their own space. You can stand in front of a Sam Gilliam painting and feel like you’re looking into the Grand Canyon.”

Part of the Smithsonian, The Hirshhorn Museum is America’s national museum of modern and contemporary art and is home to one of the most important collections of postwar American art.

Chui has served as the museum’s director since 2014, but will depart in September to take up the same role at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, becoming the latest in a string of Smithsonian directors to leave following the Trump administration’s review of all 21 of the organisation’s museums and cultural spaces.