By Juan Munoz
Last Conversation Piece, (1994-1995), bronze, 66 1/2 x 244 3/4 x 321 1/8 in. (168.9 x 621.7 x 815.7 cm) as installed. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Museum Purchase, 1995. Photography by Lee Stalsworth. In the final work of Muñoz’s acclaimed five-part series, expressively rendered, life-size figures placed on the grounds of the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden appear to the viewer to be engaged in a fraught, enigmatic encounter. According to Muñoz scholar Alex Potts, “The somewhat unsettling combination of theatre and sculpture in Muñoz’s work produces a scenario where action and stasis, and presence and void, vie with one another.”