See a time-lapse video of a room-wrapping installation by Barbara Kruger that opens Aug. 20, 2012, at the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C.
August 2, 2012, 6:43 p.m. ET
By KELLY CROW
When artist Barbara Kruger has something to say, she tends to use 12-foot-tall letters.
The 67-year-old Ms. Kruger, who is based in New York, has earned a reputation over the past three decades for pasting aphorisms about power and consumerism atop black-and-white photographs in combinations that are equally wry and wince-inducing. An early example from 1987 shows a hand holding up a card that reads, "I Shop Therefore I Am." More recently, she's created videos and wrapped entire rooms in pithy texts that splay across floors and squeeze above doorways.
Now, Ms. Kruger is headed to Washington, where her latest installation, "Belief+Doubt," has taken over just about every surface in the lower lobby of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The work, which covers 6,700 square feet of surface area, has been printed onto wallpaper-like sheets in her signature colors of red, black and white. The vinyl portions on the floor will be mopped daily to get rid of shoe scuffs. The exhibition goes on public view Aug. 20 and will stay up for about three years.
The Hirshhorn Museum's 'Belief+Doubt.'
The artist has made playful use of the architecture: On the strip of wall above the descending escalator, riders will see "Don't Look Down on Anyone." Across the threshold of the museum's new store will be the phrase, "Plenty Should Be Enough."
The museum store's checkerboard floor also reads like a shopper's lament, with squares that read, "Hoard It," "Crave It," "Break It" and "Return It." Assistant curator Melissa Ho said this last suggestion initially raised some eyebrows with officials at Smithsonian Enterprises, which oversees the Hirshhorn's gift shop, but Ms. Ho said she reassured them. "I said, 'Don't you think she's funny?' "
Collectors seem to think so: Last fall, one paid Christie's a record $902,500 for her 1985 photo of a ventriloquist's dummy, "Untitled (When I Hear the Word Culture I Take Out My Checkbook)."
Humor has long played a role in Ms. Kruger's work—she has placed smiley faces above the lobby's restroom doors—but her style favors satire. That's partly why Hirshhorn director Richard Koshalek said he thought of her two years ago when he was angling to transform the lower lobby. "With Congress steps away from us on the Mall, we have to find ways to engage with the powers of this city," Mr. Koshalek said. "We shouldn't hide from it."
Ms. Kruger said she didn't set out to lobby for any particular political party; indeed, both sides will likely find phrases that sum up their Capitol Hill sentiments. One patch of floor beside an elevator reads, "Admit Nothing. Blame Everyone." Another stretch of wall reads, "Whose Power? Whose Values?" The point, she said, is to provoke people to question themselves, and others. "At election time, questions come in handy, right?" she said.
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared August 3, 2012, on page D7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: An Artist Has Her Say—All Over A Museum's Lobby and Store.