The Hirshhorn Museum Commissions Nicolas Party to Transform its Facade

The artist’s temporary mural, </i>Draw the Curtain</i>, will be on display while the exterior of the Washington, D.C., museum undergoes repairs.

By: Jaxson Stone

Swiss artist Nicolas Party’s work has long engaged the built environment. Whether he’s extending his framed paintings onto a gallery’s walls, constructing architectural interventions within an exhibition space, or creating public murals or sculptures, Party has a way of enveloping viewers in unsettling soft pastel landscapes punctuated with the piercing gaze of anonymous figures.

Draw the Curtain, a new commission for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., is the artist’s—and the Hirshhorn’s—largest work to date. On view from September 18 through spring 2022, the temporary mural is printed on a giant scrim wrapping 360 degrees around the cylindrical, Gordon Bunshaft–designed museum while it undergoes facade repair. 

The idea for the piece was simple: Scaffolding is ugly, and the museum needed a way to cover it during construction. “Sometimes the process of revealing or hiding is the work itself,” said Party at a recent artist talk with Hirshhorn curator Anne Reeve. He noted that obstructing and revealing a subject has been employed as a device throughout art history, with the curtain as a common motif.