After a four-month renovation, the third floor of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington has reopened, in time for the museum's 25th anniversary year.

In addition to more wall space, new carpets, platforms for sculpture and improved lighting, all the art has been reinstalled.

The museum's collection of modern art, which occupies these galleries, begins with Thomas Eakins and continues through Pop Art.

"As the collection has been refined, the level of quality has gotten higher," said Neal Benezra, the assistant director who oversaw the reinstallation. "We've tried not to necessarily present a textbook history but to put together interesting combinations that question conventional wisdom."

Benezra has aimed to give visitors unusual pairings. Wayne Thiebaud's "Girls With Ice Cream Cone" (1963), a Pop painting of a girl in a one-piece bathing suit with her legs splayed, now hangs next to Sigmar Polke's "Bunnies" (1966), a deeply ironic painting based on a photograph of Playboy bunnies.

"They're both images of women," he said, "one by a California Pop artist and one by a German commenting on American Pop and media culture."

The museum's second-floor galleries are also being renovated. More of the Hirshhorn's contemporary collection will be reinstalled there. They are to open in April.

Pub Date: 3/02/99