From the street, the effect is disorienting; someone has deposited the set from The Guns of Navarone on the Washington Mall. It is a squat cylinder four stories high and 231 ft. across, sheathed in granite aggregate the color of flushed elephant skin. The outside wall is blank except for an embrasure; one looks (in vain) for the muzzle of a 16-in. gun peeping from the slit. Such, on first glimpse, is the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, built to house the enormous collection of 4,000 paintings and 2,000 sculptures that Joseph Hirshhorn, 75,...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
