For the past two years, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's After Hours event has boasted consistently sold-out crowds, and Friday evening’s 10th outing was no exception. The event drew 2,300 young professionals and art lovers for gallery tours and dancing in the museum’s outdoor plaza from 8 p.m. to midnight.
“It makes art accessible,” said Maurye McCarthy, the Hirshhorn’s event manager for After Hours. With tickets priced online at $21.50, the event is designed to boost the museum’s profile and give people who might not normally visit a chance to see the Hirshhorn’s special exhibits and permanent collections. "The young professionals who come to this work pretty long hours and they might not be able to visit the museum during the day,” added Kevin Crysler, the museum's director of development. “By being here from 8 p.m to midnight on a Friday night, you can get out of work and meet other people who are interested in art."
After Hours is held three times a year, and the museum’s production team works to make sure the mostly outdoor event remains focused on the museum’s current exhibitions and mission, so that it’s more than just a bar on the National Mall. Friday’s incarnation included a curator-led tour of the “Strange Bodies” exhibition, and the evening’s entertainment had ties to the Hirshhorn’s programs—one of the DJs, Izzie-B (a.k.a. Iona Rozeal Brown), is an artist whose work is in the museum’s collection and was featured in the Hirshhorn’s “Art Surrounds You” advertising campaign. Music is another key part of event, with new and nationally recognized musicians and DJs providing entertainment, including past performers like electronic musician Dan Deacon and the experimental music duo Lucky Dragons.
Over the years, the party has become more streamlined, with a move to online ticketing to avoid long lines at the door and a limit on the number of tickets sold—the museum used to host as many as 2,600 guests, which created bottlenecks in the galleries and caused security concerns. Nowadays the guest list is capped at 2,000, and another 300 of the museum's Annual Circle members are invited to attend free-of-charge.
McCarthy said that security is one of the three areas that make up the budget, along with sound and entertainment and food and drink. “It’s a very bare bones budget. We don’t have a lot of fluff, or flowers, but you don’t need it when you have all this priceless art,” she said.
The Hirshhorn drew a trend-conscious crowd, with staff from The Washington Post’s Fashion Washington magazine plucking stylish guests out of the crowd to shoot portraits in the style of street fashion photographers. General admission partygoers could purchase mojitos and pulled pork sandwiches, while Annual Circle members could snack on the duck tacos from Mie N Yu provided in the V.I.P. lounge, which was decorated with white couches and ottomans from Fandango Productions and a steel bar topped with bottles of Emperor Vodka, an in-kind sponsor.
After the galleries closed at 10 p.m., hip-hop, R&B, and deep house tracks from DJs Izzie-B, Nyko Skiie, and Dahlu kept guests dancing till closing time.