Courtesy Diller Scofidio + Renfro

It’s been a long time coming for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden to deploy the “bubble” project designed to fill the center of the ring-shaped structure. But this morning the Washington City Paper reported that the thing finally has an official name, thanks to one of its lead sponsors.

The bubble, which museum officials were calling the “Temporary Inflatable Pavilion,” will be called the Bloomberg Balloon following a gift of more than $1 million from Bloomberg LP. Washingtonians started calling the project the “Bubble” not long after it was first announced in late 2009. The Hirshhorn originally hoped to “inflate” the structure, designed by the architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, later this year, but funding snags pushed the opening into 2013.

Bloomberg pledged $1 million in September 2010, a figure that has since grown, the City Paper’s Kriston Capps reported. But why is the one-off structural addition now being called a “Balloon” instead of a “Bubble”? It might be something about associating the name of a self-funding billionaire politician who has deep ties to the financial services industry with the word “bubble.”

Richard Koshalek, the Hirshhorn’s director, told Capps that the Bubble-turned-Balloon and the new “Song 1” video installation that debuted on the museum’s exterior last night, are just the beginning of a series of public art projects:

“This is the beginning of 10 big things, and we’re going to land them here at the Hirshhorn like planes at LAX,” Koshalek told the City Paper.