DC Sculpture Garden Reopens With Three Giant Yoshitomo Nara Heads
A four-year rebuild reopens free, with three giant white Nara heads on the West Lawn. A free museum sits seven minutes away, and lunch across the Mall starts at 12 dollars.
🪨 The Garden Reopens
🕚 Gates Open at 11, Not 10
The Sculpture Garden ends a four-year closure on Oct 31, redesigned by Hiroshi Sugimoto and holding nearly 60 works, from Rodin and Matisse to Tony Smith. The opening celebration starts at 10 a.m. and runs to 4, but the garden gates themselves open to the public at 11 a.m. At 11:30 a.m. Yoshitomo Nara speaks on the West Lawn, opening day only. All of it is free, no ticket needed.
🌸 Three Giant Heads in White
Long Tall Peace Sister, Smiling and Tiny Bright Round Eyes are the three new Nara heads: palm-sized clay forms he shaped in 2021, scaled up, fabricated in aluminum and coated in white urethane paint. They inaugurate an annual West Lawn commission and stay up to Nov 7, 2027. Up close the white surfaces hold the light like snowdrifts, the winter memory Nara carries from childhood.
🍕 Free Museum, $12 Lunch
After the talk, walk seven minutes west on Independence Avenue to the National Museum of Asian Art, free with no ticket and open 10 to 5:30. Then 13 minutes across the Mall to the National Gallery of Art, also free to enter, where the Cascade Café closes at 3 p.m.: a pizza combo is 12 dollars, a burger with fries 14.50 dollars, tax added at the register. Rendering: the two garden images here are the museum's renderings, not photographs, made before the gates open.
