Joseph Hirshhorn is memorialized by one of the country’s great modern art museums, but he’d hoped for an entire town to bear his name. More than hoped, actually: In the mid-1950s, he commissioned architect Philip Johnson to design a utopian “town of culture” in Ontario, Canada, to be based around a 10-story office tower surrounded by a library, theater, and concert hall. It wasn’t to be, but Canadian artist Terence Gower, working from research he conducted as a 2007 Smithsonian fellow, has now created an animated digital video of the proposed hamlet based on the preparatory materials Hirshhorn left behind.
Hirshhorn, who’d emigrated to Brooklyn from Latvia when he was six, made a million in the stock market before he was 30, but had the foresight to get out before the crash of 1929. He increased his already impressive fortune many times over by investing in mining interests. In 1953, he discovered plutonium, making him wealthy enough to acquire an art collection that would approach 6,000 pieces. By 1955, his plan for the town was underway. Protectionist forces prevailed to keep him out, but notion of sharing his fortune with public remained in Hirshhorn’s mind. He donated his entire collection to the U.S. government in 1966. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden opened eight years later.
If you go
“Terence Gower, Public Spirit”
Where: Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Seventh St. and Independence Ave. SW
When: Through March 22, 2009
Info: Free, 202-633-4674; www.hmsg.si.edu
