Gallery Experience: Smithsonian Gardens on "The Changes"

Join Smithsonian Gardens horticulturist Melanie Pyle for a lunchtime gallery talk on the installation and ongoing care of the plants that fill Rashid Johnson’s monumental sculpture The Changes (2025), on view in Big Things for Big Rooms.

About the Exhibition
Big Things for Big Rooms traces the development of immersive, large-scale artworks since the late 1960s. This presentation of 10 artworks—five on view for the first time at the Museum—is drawn largely from the Hirshhorn collection.

Organized in two parts, the exhibition offers a multisensorial investigation of how artists create installations that expand the boundaries of an artwork and the role of the visitor. The first section of the show introduces the development of “Environments”: expansive installations by pioneering artists such as Dan Flavin, Sam Gilliam, Robert Irwin (whose work defined the Light and Space movement), Lygia Pape, and Land artist Richard Long. The second half reveals the ways that contemporary artists such as Paul Chan, Olafur Eliasson, Spencer Finch, Rashid Johnson, and Mika Rottenberg are expanding upon these foundational ideas in different ways, often using everyday materials.

Find out more here.

If you have questions or a request for access services or accommodations that can make your experience more inclusive, please contact hirshhornexperience@si.edu. One to two weeks’ advance notice is recommended but not required.