National Museum of Asian ArtNational Mall
Do Ho Suh: Public Figures
On the Freer plaza facing the National Mall, a monumental empty plinth held aloft by hundreds of small striding figures, questioning who monuments are for.
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At a glance, the Washington Post's Kriston Capps wrote, it looks like "an empty plinth for a memorial still missing its heroic bronze." You look up and find nothing on top. Then you look down: under the stone, scores of small figures caught mid-stride are holding it up.
Do Ho Suh first made the piece in 1998 for a Public Art Fund show in Brooklyn. This version, almost ten feet high in jesmonite, aluminum and resin, was commissioned for the museum's centennial, the first new sculpture outside the building in three decades. Even the planting counts: a ring of mondo grass Suh ties to the Korean word "mincho", public grass that keeps growing back. In a city where half the traffic circles come with a general on horseback, this is the pedestal nobody got.
It is one outdoor sculpture on Freer Plaza, facing the National Mall, free and staying until April 2029. The galleries behind it are free too, open daily 10am to 5:30pm.
Look for
The empty top
Look up at a plinth nearly ten feet high with nothing on it, the spot where a heroic statue would normally stand.
The figures underneath
Look down at the base, where the stone gives way to many small, individualized figures caught mid-stride, carrying the weight together.
The ring of grass
Mondo grass and turf around the base were chosen with the artist, who links them to mincho, Korean for 'public grass' that never dies.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want a gallery show: this is a single outdoor sculpture on the plaza.
Also at National Museum of Asian Art
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Image credits
8
- Revolutions: Art from the Hirshhorn Collection, 1860–1960Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
- Adam Pendleton: Love, QueenPeio Erroteta / Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution
- Light Is a Plastic Medium: The Photography of Carlotta CorpronCourtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- National Museum of Asian ArtDifference engine, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenGryffindor, via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- National Museum of Natural Historyajay_suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- National Museum of American HistoryCarol M. Highsmith / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- International Spy MuseumFarragutful, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0