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‘Straight’ (2008-12) by Ai Weiwei. Photo by Cathy Carver, courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum

Friday, December 28: Gallery Talk with Remina Greenfield

Ai Weiwei had already developed a reputation as a rebellious artist, but after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan in which more than 5,000 children were killed, most due to the poor construction of school buildings, he became much more outspoken. He organized citizens’ investigations and made pieces like “Straight,” a pile of 38 tons of rebar, recovered and straightened from the wreckage of the earthquake. As part of the museum’s multi-level exhibition, “Ai Weiwei: According to What?” Remina Greenfield will lead a discussion about the piece. Free. 12:30 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Hirshhorn.

Saturday, December 29: Lincoln’s Indian Legacy

Abraham Lincoln is remembered for many things, but lesser known is his political relationship with the Indians. Showing Saturday at the American Indian Museum, the film Canes of Power looks at 19 Pueblos in New Mexico, each a recipient of a silver-headed cane from the president. Learn about the objects that represented and continue to symbolize the Pueblos’ sovereignty and the ongoing importance of Lincoln’s commitment. Free. 12:30 p.m. American Indian Museum.

Sunday, December 30: Portrait Story Days: Andy Warhol

Both the sitter for and creator of multiple portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, Andy Warhol is at once am ubiquitous and enigmatic artist. With portraits of Albert Einstein, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Jimmy Carter, Andy Warhol reinvented the religious icon, within a secular, pop art aesthetic. Learn about the man who was a legend in his own right, defining an entire artistic scene and continuing to inspire admiration years after his death in 1987. Free. 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. National Portrait Gallery.

And if you happen to have a herd of family members curious to explore all the Smithsonian has to offer, just download our specially created Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is also packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

See Warhol through an artist's eyes in Talking With Andy on January 11. Image courtesy of the Hirshhorn .

January 10 Mission: Impossible in IMAX

Some Hollywood action is taking shape at Smithsonian’s IMAX theaters with the arrival of the new thriller Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol starring Tom Cruise. When the IMF is shut down after being implicated in a global terrorist plot, agent Ethan Hunt (Cruise) takes his new team undercover to clear the organization’s name and stop the attack. Rated PG 13. $15/adult; $12/members; $14/senior; $13.50/under 12. 5:30 p.m., 8:10 p.m. and Friday/Saturday nights 10:40 p.m. in the Johnson Theater at the Natural History Museum; 5:40 p.m., 8:10 p.m. and 10:40 p.m. in the Airbus Theater at Udvar-Hazy Center.

Wednesday, January 11 Talking about Andy

Explore the iconic legacy of Andy Warhol with acclaimed contemporary artist Kara Walker. Among the youngest people ever to win a MacArthur Genius Grant, Walker is known for her unblinking treatment of race and oppression. Join her in a discussion of one of her earliest influences, and learn more about Warhol’s role in the melding of pop culture and fine art. Free. 7:00 p.m. Ring Auditorium, Hirshhorn Museum.

Thursday, January 12 Webby Talk

Stay on the cutting edge of today’s digital trends with David-Michel Davies, executive director of the Webby Awards, in a discussion of the most innovative work happening on the Web. Every year, the Webby Awards highlights work from more than 10,000 entries from around the world. Based on these entries, Webby Talks present questions on the newest developments in social media, interactive advertising, content creation, and more. Free. 3 p.m. Ring Auditorium, Hirshhorn Museum.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

Andy Warhol's Shadows, on view in its entirety for the first time. Photo courtesy Hirshhorn Museum

October 24 goSmithsonian Trek

Play the new goSmithsonian Trek game on your iPhone or Android to take part in an scavenger hunt in the largest museum complex in the world. Download the free SCVNGR App to answer questions about artifacts, solve mysteries about national treasures and complete GPS-based challenges in nine Smithsonian museums. This innovative game brings a whole new level of interaction to the Smithsonian experience. Free. Play via SCVNGR App on iPhone or Android.

October 25 Talking About Andy: In the Shadows

Shadows, a newly installed exhibition, is a monumental 102-panel work by Andy Warhol, rarely seen on view in its entirety. Come for this walk-through and gallery talk to get an insider’s perspective on the work. Speakers include Dia Art Foundation curator Yasmil Raymond and Glenn O’Brien, an original member of The Factory—Warhol’s cutting edge studio that the artist founded in 1964 in an abandoned hat factory—and former editor of Interview—the fashion magazine Warhol created in 1969. Free. 7 p.m. Hirshhorn Museum, 2nd floor.

October 26 Skin Color Evolution

As part of the Natural History Museum‘s “RACE: Are We So Different?” exhibition, distinguished anthropologist Nina Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History, will provide insight into the biological underpinnings of the evolution of human skin pigmentation. The discussion will address the complex interactions between the biological factors that influenced skin color early in our species’ history, and how appearance has been used to create the concept of race. This Residents Associates program is $20 for the public, $15 for members, and $13 for senior members, with tickets available online. 6:45 to 8:15 p.m. Ripley Center.

October 27 Independent Inventors Symposium

The U.S. Trademark and Patent Office presents this unique event to complement the American Art Museum’s “Great American Hall of Wonders” exhibition. As part of the day and a half long symposium, patent officials will help inventors understand the newly passed America Invents Act and how it impacts independent inventors. On the second day, a panel of experts will give participants tips on manufacturing, marketing and licensing to take their inventions to the next level. Free, with space limited and online registration encouraged. 1 to 7 p.m. on Oct. 27, continuing 8:30 a.m. to 5:5 p.m. on Oct. 28. American Art Museum, McEvoy Auditorium.

For a complete listing of Smithsonian events and exhibitions visit the goSmithsonian Online Visitors Guide. Additional reporting by Michelle Strange.

This past Friday night, instead of closing its doors, the Hirshhorn museum held its three-times-a-year After Hours party, transforming into a sophisticated dance party, with gallery tours, food and drink, and live music from the nine-piece psychedelic orchestra the Crystal Ark. Throngs of partygoers filled the museum and outdoor plaza, dancing to the music and enjoying the night.

The party was themed around one of the Hirshhorn’s newest installations, Andy Warhol’s Shadows. Warhol created the 102-panel work in his later years, and the museum’s unique sweeping architecture allows it to be viewed in its 450-foot entirety for the first time.

“What’s so unique about the marriage of the space and the artwork is that we occupy this wonderful round building, so we are able to have a continuous wall, with no corners and nothing obstructing your view,” said curator Melissa Ho, who gave a gallery tour during the event. “So for the first time, we’re able to show all 102 panels of Shadows, and it’s a continuous panorama. You really get a sense of the monumentality of the work.”

Ho feels there couldn’t be a more appropriate exhibition to theme an After Hours party on than Shadows. “One of the things that’s really lovely about After Hours happening during this exhibition is that the first time shadows was shown, there was a huge party,” she said. “Andy Warhol, in his usual flippant way, said ‘this is disco decor.’”

At the start of the night, multimedia projections by Bec Stupak and Honeygun Labs played around the central fountain, set to music by Nancy Whang, a former keyboardist for LCD Soundsystem and vocalist for The Juan MacLean. At ten, the Crystal Ark came on and performed a set of their distinctive blend of Funk Carioca, atabaque drumming, Tropicália and South American-style rave, driving the crowd into a frenzy.

Partygoers loved the unusual blend of Smithsonian-quality modern art and live dance music. “You get the art culture and you get the nightlife culture together,” said Jeanna Lo. “Just looking around, it’s beautiful here: the lights, the music, it’s not what you expect from a museum. Everything’s kind of unexpected.”

“This gives people access to have an enlivened, very social, very hip, very now, very cool scene,” said Danny Chapman. “And then they can go inside and have access to some of the most beautiful things that man has ever created.”

Looking around the party, once can’t help but imagine Warhol appreciating the setting in which one of his most significant works would appear in its entirety for the first time. When he debuted Shadows to the public, in the midst of his own colossal party, he told his admirers, “The review will be bad—my reviews always are. But the reviews of the party will be terrific.”

Andy Warhol, "Shadows," 1978-79. Dia Art Foundation. Copyright 2011 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bill Jacobson.

As of this month, all 102 paintings from Warhol’s 1978-79 series, Shadows, are on display together for the very first time at the Hirshhorn Museum. Hung edge-to-edge, the series extends an impressive 450 feet around the museum’s curved, second-floor gallery. It really is a sight to behold.

Here, Evelyn Hankins, associate curator at the Hirshhorn, talks about the making of Shadows and what it meant in the context of Warhol’s career, as well as what goes into displaying it.

Why haven’t all 102 canvases been shown together until now?

The number of paintings you install is dependent upon the architecture of the space where you are showing them. It requires 450 linear feet to have 102 paintings, and so I think it has been just a matter of not having the space. When the show was originally installed in Soho in 1979, the Heiner Freidrich Gallery showed 83. My understanding is that most of them were in the gallery, but then there were some in the office as well.

How was the series made?

It was made in Warhol’s Factory. With a lot of Warhol’s work, you don’t know how involved he actually was, because he had his assistants and the whole idea of the Factory was that there was no single hand. Warhol claimed at one point that the shadows were just shadows in his office, and someone else has claimed that they used a maquette to cast them. Each of the canvases are painted with sponge mop in a brightly-colored acrylic paint. Then, the shadow image is silk screened on top, primarily in black. There are a couple in silver. They are negatives and positives.

Who decides the order of the paintings?

It is a predetermined order. My understanding is the first 83 follow the installation at the Heiner Freidrich Gallery and then the rest have been determined by Dia Art Foundation. [Shadows is on loan from Dia.]

In 1978 and ’79, Warhol was thinking of it as an installation that changes, that takes the form of the architecture, of the space around it, and thus changes with each iteration. But as with all of our works, we try to adhere to the artist’s wishes and work within the spirit of the artist’s intentions.

Did Warhol ever comment on what inspired the piece?

He published, in New York Magazine, a statement as much about the opening as it as about the Shadows. He played them down. I think what’s important about the Shadows though is that they are abstractions. For artists coming of age in the late 1950s and 1960s, there was this incredible weight of the influence and power of abstract expressionism. Artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still were about this direct outpouring of psychoanalytic, unconscious energy onto the canvas. It was about pure abstraction and this very close relationship between the artist and the paint on the canvas, this indelible, undeniable relationship between the two. And Warhol upended that with pop art. He didn’t paint the paintings himself. The subject matter was banal subject matter found in the everyday world. So for him to turn to abstraction, I think, reflects larger changes in the art world as a whole. The Shadows are among a group of works in the 1970s, where Warhol began to explore abstraction, which is something he would pursue until his death in the 1980s. So it is this real shift for him, in terms of subject matter.

“Andy Warhol: Shadows,” on display through January 15, is part of “Warhol On the Mall,” a fall celebration of the artist organized in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art. “Andy Warhol: Headlines” is on exhibition at the National Gallery through January 2.

The Hirshhorn is hosting several related events, including a lecture series, an After Hours event and a film screening. For more about the exhibition, read: “Bringing Andy Warhol’s Shadows to the Hirshhorn.”