Larry Warsh Gifts Hirshhorn Museum Photographs by Contemporary Chinese Artists

Originally published on Hypeart.com

The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. has announced the acquisition of 141 photographs by 20 Chinese contemporary artists that were gifted by collector and No More Rulers founder, Larry Warsh. The lot of images previously featured in an exhibition entitled “A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China,” that recently concluded at the institution on January 7.

Based in New York, Warsh is noted for owning an extensive collection of pop artworks from Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, as well as for his publishing arm, which has released books on Ai Weiwei, Daniel Arsham, Judy Chicago and more. While Warsh has always shown an interest in collecting work from Chinese artists, he began to understand more about the nuances and traditions of daily Chinese life upon a visit to the world’s second most populous country in 2004. “It gave me a better understanding of artists and how they live and how they work,” Warsh previously noted of the trip, adding that it also gave him a “sense of China in terms of its stage, where it was, because it was changing.”

Per Barrons, the newly acquired photos include works by Cui Xiuwen, Rong Rong, Song Dong and Zhang Huan — each of whom “employed photography to instantly record their responses to new ideas of identity, sexuality, and consumerism against the rapidly changing social, cultural, and urban Chinese landscape for audiences in and outside the country.” In particular, Warsh’s collection spotlights the response by China’s artistic community following the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, which began to reflect a freedom of expression that was scarce during the rule of Mao Zedong.