Making Your Mark
Prints and Drawings from the Hechinger Collection

Making Your Mark

Exhibition Page
ReTooled
Highlights from the Hechinger Collection

ReTooled

Exhibition Page
Tools In Motion
Works from the Hechinger Collection

Tools In Motion

Exhibition Page
Tools as Art
The Hechinger Collection

Tools as Art

Exhibition Page

ABOUT THE COLLECTION

The complete Hechinger Collection, featuring nearly 400 works of art, was donated to IA&A in 2003 by hardware-industry pioneer John Hechinger, Sr. The collection’s contemporary prints, drawings, paintings, and sculptures represent a wealth of 20th-century art that incorporates tools and hardware by artists Berenice Abbott, Arman, Jim Dine, Walker Evans, Jacob Lawrence, Fernand Léger, and Claes Oldenburg, among others.

The collection celebrates the ubiquity of tools in our lives with art that magically transforms utilitarian objects into fanciful works of beauty, surprise, and wit. Selections from IA&A’s Hechinger Collection are on view in IA&A’s offices and have been exhibited at IA&A at Hillyer. IA&A regularly culls from the collection for a national tour—as with our exhibitions Tools as Art, Tools in Motion, ReTooled and Making You Mark—and can loan individual works to other exhibiting institutions.

395

Works

275

Artists

67

Exhibition Presentations

A fifth-generation Washingtonian, John Hechinger attended Lehigh and Yale Universities and served in the United States Air Force in the China-Burma theater in World War II. Until his retirement in 1996, he headed the former Hechinger Company, a 200+ hardware store chain founded by his father in 1911.

Over the years, Hechinger actively participated in numerous civic and philanthropic organizations, including the United Way Fund, the Washington Urban League, the Boys Club of Washington, and Columbia Hospital for Women. A strong civil rights advocate, he created a diverse workforce and was the first appointed chairman of Washington, DC’s City Council. He was also passionately involved in the handgun control movement and Business Executives for National Security.

John Hechinger and his wife, June Ross Hechinger, gave his collection of tool-themed art to International Arts & Artists in 2003. Mr. Hechinger died on his 84th birthday on January 18, 2004. Mrs. Hechinger died on October 14, 2015.

In seeking a posthumous home for his beloved collection, Mr. Hechinger chose IA&A because of its commitment to preserving the integrity and public access of the collection.

EXPLORE THE COLLECTION

Tools themselves are beyond categorizing by status or class, and they lack social boundaries, as should art.

REQUEST A LOAN

To request a loan from IA&A’s Hechinger Collection, please contact the Registrar at seniorregistrar@artsandartists.org.