PHOTO: FREDRIK NILSEN/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH
The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden announced today that it has commissioned Mark Bradford, the Los Angeles–based painter, to do a site-specific painting. The work will be on view for ten months, starting on November 17, 2016.
A release calls Bradford’s commission a “circular ‘fresco,’ ” noting that it will span the entire circumference of the Washington, D.C. museum’s second-floor galleries. Earlier this year, in a New Yorker profile, Bradford mentioned that he was working on his largest works to date—paintings for a corporate-building lobby in Rockefeller Center. The Hirshhorn work will top those paintings in size.
“The Hirshhorn building presents an unparalleled opportunity for artists to interact with its sweeping circular architecture,” Melissa Chiu, the Hirshhorn’s director, said in a statement. “The Inner Circle spaces have hosted large-scale artworks by artists before, but this is the first time that the full expanse of the second-level ambulatory walls will be turned over to a single artist. Mark Bradford has won acclaim for his site-specific works, and we are thrilled to see what he does at the Hirshhorn.”