Reflections On Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Hirshhorn

In 2017, Hiroshi Sugimoto told the Japan Society he has a “stone fetish”; the Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden is proof. Hammered aggregate, Maine granite, Chinese pavers, and The Burghers of Calais in Hiroshi Sugimoto’s redesigned Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden After recently following the photographer, sculptor, antique collector, and Noh aficionado’s concerning statements glorifying civilization’s lost past, I was very concerned for what Sugimoto’s redesign of a Modernist landscape attached to a Brutalist museum on the National Mall in the midst of a fascist ascendancy might portend. So when I say it could have been worse, I don’t mean it could have been much, much worse—though it really could have; I mean, it is, in fact, fine. It’s even nice. Vertical striations in the steel panels of Sugimoto’s Passage probably value engineered an order of magnitude of savings on fabrication and installation, and probably mitigating the fingerprints that are sure to come Mark Grotjahn, Untitled, 2014, and…