Wonkette Party Crash: Hirshhorn Museum 'After Hours'
The Hirshhorn Museum: It's free! Except for every couple months, when they convince the kids to go there by, weirdly, charging admission.
The museum had one of those "after hours" parties last Friday, and we sent Liz Gorman, Intrepid Girl Reporter to document the fun. Intern Nick just happened to be there, so we made him write it up.
You can find Liz's pictures right here . And after the jump: Lite-brites! Ian Svenonius! Art! Tipsy pseudo-intellectuals both young and old! And Lite-brites!
Hirshhorn 'After Hours' Photo Gallery
The Hirshhorn Museum threw one of its quarterly "After Hours" house parties on Friday evening to the delight of every caste of hipster whose ethical constitution lets them pay $12 to stroll an art gallery that's free the other 364 days a year. The "ticket" wasn't for the collection though, it was for the access to booze, the Lite-Brites , some artists you've never heard of, and a DJ you might've.
The Hirschhorn cats get points for trying to have an honest-to-god hot party in a museum filled with honest-to-god priceless art. It can't be easy for them to let so much detritus into their rarefied realm. To show our support, we go every time, even though we hate expensive beer lines and the battalion of uniformed security guards deployed through the building guarding the carefully arranged, moisture controlled rusty car pieces under plexi.
The entry area had giant oddly shaped foam tufts, covered in tapestries with newspaper style "headlines" on them. Badges kept a watchful eye to make sure no "it's news!/it's a sofa!" fights broke out. Because we'd been there three minutes and didn't have a glass in our hand, it was up to the roped off 2nd floor "approved drinking zone." The two choices of beer included one from Maryland and one from Virginia, so no one who left their parent's basement in "the counties" would have to feel out of place. Then it was off to get our fix of shiny things and ironic nostalgia at the Lite-Brite Playland Workshop. It case you're wondering, no, we didn't make a middle finger. It looked more like a dick-and-balls anyway, until a few strategically placed pegs turned it in to what could potentially be identified as a bird. Since no post-post-cool 20-something art fag is gonna bother to put on their vintage blazer, come to a party, and create a work just to have it destroyed by a drunk blogger looking for some cheap representational pornography, the museum took Polaroids of all the finished "pieces" and taped them to the wall. Wanna take a guess on how many Corcoran students added, "Shown at Hirshhorn" to their resumes over the weekend?
The clock was ticking on our attention span so it was time to hit the dance floor. DJ Ian Svenonius had his tables set up in the opening to the gallery room that has the "mushrooms growing in the loamy" piece in the center, and his jams were on point. Or, as on point as jams came be when they're played at muzak volume in a hallway where the dimmer on the track lighting is set at "bright as shit."
We kid Hirshhorn, we kid because we love. And we'd love come back whenever you have the next one, so please invite us, kthanks.