Photo by M.V. Jantzen, courtesy Flickr

The closures coincided with the opening of the current Louise Bourgeois retrospective, part of which is picture above, at the museum.

Louise Bourgeois The Appendix: Frank Stella Needs $5 Million; Louise Bourgeois Buys a House; and Viva la Arte Cubana! First Annual Art Awards Winners Announced Picasso Leads Sotheby's Print Sale Nouveau Is the New New Advice and Verse in London Lehman Art Auction Prices on the Low Side Still Prime Time?

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

The closures "roughly coincided" with the opening of the museum's Louise Bourgeois show on February 16, Green reports.

"We haven't had what we feel is enough security to secure all the galleries," said Hirshhorn spokesperson Gabriel Riera. "We've had to have rolling close-outs of galleries to make sure we are able to keep Louise Bourgeois [guarded]."

Riera says that the security decline is due to "budget setbacks" and that the Smithsonian Institution, which manages security staff for all its museums, won't be able to hire new guards until the new federal budget is passed.

A spokesperson for the Smithsonian counters that the Hirshhorn is the only museum to have to close spaces due to staffing problems, that the museum actually has four more guards than last year, and that any changes are unrelated to Smithsonian-wide financial difficulties. But Riera says that the Hirshhorn now has 38 guards, down from 47 in 2007, and that museum regularly communicates to the Smithsonian that additional guards are needed.

According to the Art Newspaper's annual museum attendance survey, the Hirshhorn is the second-most-visited modern and contemporary museum in the U.S., after the Museum of Modern Art in New York.