At her 90th birthday party (!) on Friday, Olga Hirshhorn — the widow of Joseph Hirshhorn, the founding donor of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden — said that one statue in D.C. in particular inspired her. She recalled that in 1965 or ’66, just shortly after she had married Joe Hirshhorn, the two were living in Kalorama and considering moving his art collection to a permanent home in Washington. (Take a wild guess how that plan worked out.) She said that she still favors long walks down Massachusetts Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, and P Street NW, and that it was on one of her walks some 40 years ago that she discovered this statue of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko, pictured here by Ronnie R. As a little girl, Hirshhorn remembered, she had to recite Shevchenko’s poetry for family events.

“I wondered if there are enough Ukrainians in Washington to pay for this thing,” she told guests during a speech at her party. (“There are!” one of her guests shouted in response.)