While designer Liz Diller made her politico-architectural case for The Hirshhorn Bubble in her 2012 TED talk, the Museum's own justification for the project has been unclear and uncompelling.
Explanations center on making the Hirshhorn...
While designer Liz Diller made her politico-architectural case for The Hirshhorn Bubble in her 2012 TED talk, the Museum's own justification for the project has been unclear and uncompelling.
Explanations center on making the Hirshhorn "an agent for cultural diplomacy." In February director Richard Koshalek told Kriston Capps, "This institution should be the leader in terms of setting arts and cultural dialogue. Cultural policy is set in Washington, D.C." This is debatable enough, as both mission and content.
The programming that's always discussed, though, a "Center for Creative Dialogue," involves conferences and discussions created by the Council on Foreign Relations and outside staff, not the Hirshhorn itself, or even the Smithsonian. Critics of the Bubble vision like Tyler Green note this disconnect, and that the Museum doesn't need a bubble to host such policy-flavored forums and events; they could do it right now, in the existing auditorium. And in fact, they did just that last Fall, where a capacity crowd watched TV journalist Judy Woodruff moderate a panel on "Art and Social Change" during to the Ai Weiwei exhibition.
No, The Bubble is a thing apart, apparently, from the programming that would inhabit it. Its absurdist form on this symbolic site, and the transgressive gesture towards Gordon Bunshaft's concrete donut, are meant to be self-justifying. Capps calls it "a public art stunt," and the Washington Post suggests it could "break DC from stagnation." It's starchitecture as spectacle and a catalyst for attention and, eventually, one hopes, the holy grail of Washington existence: relevance.
Meanwhile, it's amazing that until Capps' reconsideration of the project last winter in the City Paper, there was no mention of what would be, for lack of a better term, the business model: The Bubble would be a for-hire event space. Koshalek swears the Inflatable will engage the Hirshhorn's curators, too. When the Bubble is inflated, part of its programming will correspond with whatever's lining the gallery walls of the museum. The rest of the timeshare will go to whichever universities, think tanks, and corporations rent it out--a money-making proposition for the Hirshhorn which could lead to exclusive uses not quite in keeping with Diller's civic scheme. (And certainly not with the museum's artistic mission.)
"Four weeks, five weeks, maybe six weeks will be programmed by the Hirshhorn--having to do with exhibitions. How technology is driving culture. How we're going to connect to the larger world. That's the purpose," he says. However, "universities could use the space, lease the space, just like universities lease an auditorium for inauguration." And now the focus on think tanks and universities starts to make sense. The Bubble is supposed to turn the Hirshhorn into an iconic venue which cultural, political, and academic institutions will rent for their own DC-based events.
This would dovetail, or subsume, an event space plan the Museum has already been implementing. It didn't register at the time, but when I read Kriston's piece, I remembered hearing from someone affiliated with the museum that moving the bookstore from the lobby to the basement would greatly improve the prospects for renting the lobby for evening events. [Remember that one of Koshalek's earliest ideas was to justify using restricted funds for the bookstore move by commissioning and "acquiring" a permanent retail installation by Doug Aitken. Eventually the gig went to Barbara Kruger.]
So if The Bubble were actually a moneymaking investment for the Hirshhorn, why is it so hard to fund? Wouldn't it be easy enough to convince the board to "invest" in this iconic, sustainable scheme? What's a museum rent for these days, anyway? Or at least a 14,000-sf courtyard space, plus a 3,000sf glass lobby, on the Mall?
Looking at comps in the DC gala/event space market, I'd guess the Hirshhorn could ask for $12-15,000/gig, plus a few thousand more for direct