hirshorn museum, sculpture garden, simithsonian institution 

Joseph H. Hirshhorn was born in Latvia in 1899, he immigrated as an eight year old with his parents to the US. Nine years later he was working in NY as a stockbroker which would launch his career as a financier. His curiosity about art was inspired by calendar reproductions of traditional nineteenth century Salon paintings, and before he was thirty he had made his first fortune and had begun to acquire painting by some of the artists whose work had initially motivated him in reproductions. That first collection, conservative in nature, was supplanted by another that emphasized the French School from Renoir to Ranault. After a few years, it, too, was sold when Mr. Hirshhorn discovered that the art he found most exciting and toward which he felt the greatest empathy was the art of his own time. He dis not completely ignore the art of the past, but 90 percent of what he collected was created during his lifetime.