National Portrait Gallery & American Art Museum

Over the course of many months, I visited the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum, both co-located in the Old Patent Office, now known as the Reynolds Center. Because the museums stayed open to 7pm--later than most--I usually visited these museums in the evening.

I took pictures on these excursions.

The old building is splendid, both inside and out, as you see in the pictures. I especially like its covered interior modern courtyard.

National Portrait Gallery
I found the exhibit on American Origins, of portraits of historic figures, surprisingly interesting. I usually find portrait galleries boring. This time, as usual, I found the paintings boring. But, however, the text beside each painting tells interesting stories of the people and why they are important. It turned out to be more like a history lesson than an art museum. I read most of the labels because of the tales they told. Di Yin, meanwhile, thought they were boring.

I had a similar reaction to the other exhibits in the permanent collection, which holds portraits through the modern day. For instance, in the exhibit on twentieth-century sports stars (even though I hadn't heard of the majority of them), I enjoyed reading the blurbs about why they were famous (and some color about their personalities). Likewise, in an exhibit of presidential portraits, I read every item because each has a good summary of the subject and how he was viewed. These summaries are often better than the discussions I remember in my high school history books.

Di Yin says this is one of those rare museums that's "unabashedly about people."

Like the biographies in the portraits, the room descriptions are good too. For instance, the summaries of changes that occurred in 1900-1930, 1930-1950, etc. in each of these rooms are remarkably detailed, colorful, and, as I understand it, accurate.

The special exhibit on modern Asian-American portraitists was alright, with one major and one minor exception. The minor exception is Shizu Saldamando, who achieved a neat look by painting portraits directly on wood (with no background behind the faces), not canvas.

The major exception is an artist who goes by the name CYJO. I found her KYOPO Project fascinating. Kyopo comprises photos of Korean-Americans, all in the same neutral pose and with the same background. Each person wears his or her normal clothes. Accompanying each photograph is a few sentence statement from each about what being Korean-American means to them. The project's an engrossing ethnographic study. Di Yin and I looked at every photograph and read every statement.

In the special exhibit on Gertrude Stein, I relearned that I don't have the same fascination with her that many other people have. I learned--perhaps incorrectly--from her that "punctuation is necessary only for the feeble-minded." Perhaps more usefully, I learned the term Boston marriage refers to two highly educated unmarried women living together.

I felt that The Black List, the special exhibit of large-format photographs of highly accomplished African Americans (all vivid images with their subjects gazing directly at the camera), was a perfect use of the Portrait Gallery space. I enjoyed looking at the photographs, recognizing certain people I'd heard of and reading about the people I hadn't.

I was surprised to enjoy the special exhibit on Ronald Reagan. I learned stuff about his personality and his background and about his many careers before the presidency that I didn't know before.

American Art Museum
The American Art Museum seems to be about art made in America. For some reason I'd expected American Art to refer to a coherent style, not an assortment of styles joined by loose geographical ties. While I was still getting attuned to the museum's collection, I was surprised to see paintings of American Indians. They make sense in retrospect, but it didn't occur to me that they'd be there.

Most pieces in this museum don't have commentary.

Oddly (in terms of overlap), the American Art Museum has some portraits. The lack of explanations on these was particularly disconcerting given the full coverage in the portrait gallery.

In the impressionist section, I noticed there are a lot of works by two people I never heard of before: Childe Hassam and Thomas Dewing.

To the modern art collection (which included video art) as a whole, I say bleh.

One day I went with E and Di Yin to the special exhibit on The Art of Video Games. It was a small exhibit that used lots of videos both of games and of interviews with game designers. I enjoyed seeing how it broke down the evolution of video games into eras; it turns out I mostly played games from era 3: bit wars. I also liked seeing the classification of various types of games (action, target, adventure, tactics) along with examples of every type for every game system from every era.

There were also places to play games from each era on big screens. Other screens played videos of people's faces as they played games. (These videos were pre-recorded; they weren't a loop from the other section of the exhibit.) It's neat to see the different expressions: stoned, zoned out, engaged, calm, etc.

The exhibit felt like a stroll down memory lane. Nevertheless, I was disappointed. It felt lightweight. Not only was there not much about the art but in general there wasn't much about any of the main themes--art, science, and storytelling--described in the introduction. The exhibit was predominately composed of examples of games and a classification system around them.

Luce Foundation Center for American Art
The Luce Foundation Center is also housed in the upper three stories in one of the building's wings. It's an open-storage area, meaning a high density of items are displayed with little or no information. Many items are labeled only with an accession number. You can look up what an item is electronically but there are no explanatory labels. Basically, the Center is a feast for the eyes; reading about items isn't made easy.

This open-storage area is the most beautiful of any I've seen. The space is great. Even if the objects aren't worth examining--most are worth no more than a passing glance--it's worth wandering around the area. Look at the pictures.

The Center has some nice paintings.

Also, I enjoyed how the drawers open smoothly with the sound of pressurized air.

Finally, although I didn't try any, I appreciate that the Luce Foundation has a series of scavenger hunts in addition to its audio tours. I wonder why more museums don't do this.

Lunder Conservation Center
The Lunder Conservation Center is also in the same building. It's next to the Luce Center. The Conservation Center is a series of labs (devoted to either objects, paintings, paper, frames) with floor-to-ceiling glass walls so visitors can watch the conservators at work. It's also neat to see the machines in each lab. Too bad photography is prohibited there.

All the labs have a machine with a twelve-inch-wide stretchable bendable pipe. I couldn't figure out what it is for. Venting? If so, why?

Elsewhere in the Building
In a part of the building not part of either museum, there was a display that I liked of models of inventions; the exhibit is called Building a Better Mousetrap. In early days, the patent office required models in addition to description and diagrams. These models are displayed in the exhibit by courtesy of a collector; the patent office sold/returned/donated all its models in 1924. They're all scattered by now.