National Museum of African Art

The National Museum of African Art, architecturally almost a mirror of the Sackler, is small but visually interesting. I took pictures. I'm sorry it appears I didn't take any pictures of the typical statues, masks, etc. in the museum. (None are things I want in my home, and I forgot to photograph them for documentary purposes.)

I liked that every item has a description/explanation.

Though the museum supposedly has a large collection, only a little is on continuous display; most of the display space is devoted to special exhibits.

The Nigerian special exhibit had a few video displays, some of rare, old footage of ceremonies, some documentary. I appreciated that there was no talking in these films--whatever language there was was displayed on the screen. The only sound was African music, music that added a nice soundtrack to walking around the exhibit.

Inside this exhibit was an interesting sign with a discussion about the difficulty in determining provenance and origin of many of these pieces. Many of the items go into more detail about this issue, explaining how an item was collected in W and attributed to X (because that was where the person who sold it to a collector at W acquired it), and then thought to be from Y, but now historians think it's from Z because of ... Meanwhile, for some objects other labels admit that they cannot describe how the native peoples used them because no one has ever seen those objects in situ.

Months later, I returned for a special exhibit on the photographer Lalla Essaydi. A Moroccan by birth, many of her photographs are self-portraits of herself posed by Islamic architecture. Her clothes' pattern copy the building's pattern, making her part of / integrated with the scene. Sometimes she even paints her skin with henna script, accentuating the effect when there is similarly flowing writing nearby. It's a creative idea and the results are strangely fascinating.

In other photographs (and two paintings), she composed scenes modeled off famous paintings by Western artists, yet her composition includes Moroccan women and North African decorations. I also like this strategy, making art that comments on others' art.

Freer & Sackler Galleries

I visited the Freer & Sackler Galleries twice for their special exhibits. I saw their permanent collections when I visited them four years earlier. My impression of these museums hasn't changed: they're filled mostly with Asian artifacts which generally aren't my thing, and the collections aren't impressive or significant enough to make up for my diminished interest. I liked marginally more the two rooms of American at in the Freer, most filled with paintings by Whistler.

In the regular collection, I enjoyed the handful of Japanese screens and scrolls that show everyday people and everyday life. The best example of this is Autumn at Asakusa and Cherry Blossoms at Ueno Park by Hishikawa Moronobu.

In the museums I also noted again that Japanese do a great job with scary sculptures of strong warriors who guard the Buddha and defeat demons.

None of the special exhibits I saw on my first visit to these museums this year are worth describing in particular.

On the second visit, at the Sackler I saw the special exhibit of Hokusai's series of color woodblock prints involving Mount Fuji. (Usually Mount Fuji is merely in the background.) He's a Japanese artist famous for his "Great Wave" print (a.k.a. Under the Wave of Kanagawa) that everyone has seen. His works aren't my style, but I thought the variety of the scenes--all with one common theme--was neat.

But the scale of that exhibit was nothing compared with the scope of the special exhibit of Buddhist scroll paintings by Kano Kazunobu. In this series of more than fifty large scrolls from his series of a hundred, many scrolls have such vibrant colors and elegant composition that they could be used to convince people that Japanese art can rival the best of Western religious art. Again, not that these are things I particularly like, but I appreciate the quality.

On this second visit to the Sackler, I saw other new exhibits that aren't worth mentioning.

The Freer had two small special exhibits of Hokusai's art: one a series of long painted folding screens and the other a handful of scroll paintings. In both I appreciated the crispness of the painting and the depths of the colors. I'm surprised how much more I like his screens and scrolls than his woodblock work--I guess the medium is important.

In the Freer's exhibit on birds in Chinese painting, I enjoyed learning the symbolism involved in some paintings, where the birds and plants are homonyms in Chinese to a message the artist wished to convey.

Renwick Gallery

I visited the Renwick Gallery, a branch of the American Art Museum (which I also visited, naturally). The Renwick Gallery is supposedly meant to focus on the crafts and decorative arts. When I visited, the displays from the permanent collection included many oil paintings, plus things made from clay, glass, wood, fabric, plastic, mixed media (the term museums use to mean none- or many-of-the-above, including electronics). Most of the non-paintings are recent works. It felt like a haphazard collection, like overflow from the main museum of things that didn't go in any of the exhibits there but the curators felt ought to be on display somewhere.

It's a small museum. I took a bit over an hour to see it all and take all the notes I wanted.

The special exhibit on decorative art objects from the White House showcased furniture, tableware, and more. I wish I could have taken pictures in this exhibit because some of the objects were stunning. Each item's history was described. Some of these labels told neat stories, explaining when/where/how the object was made/acquired, what various presidents thought of it, and (possibly consequently) if it was later sold or put in the attic (and, if so, when it was re-acquired).

This exhibit included a cool short film, At Home in the White House, which interviewed people who grew up in the White House (and a few first ladies as well) and explored what it was like living in such a historic space. I enjoyed hearing their recollections about how they made the White House their home and what they and their parents thought of particular furnishings and decorations.

I took pictures elsewhere in the museum.

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.

Hirshhorn

I visited the Hirshhorn on an earlier trip to Washington D.C. I returned twice during this stay in D.C.

On my first trip, I saw a few special exhibits but none that I feel like mentioning here. My impression of the Hirshhorn remains the same as from my earlier visit: the collection in general is too abstract for my tastes. There was very little commentary. Maybe I'd be more accepting of these works if there were more commentary to explain the pieces, their meaning, and their significance in the evolution of art.

Later I returned to the Hirshhorn to see new exhibits, including one by light artists that was fun and a feast for the eyes.

I took pictures on both trips.

National Gallery of Art

Years ago, I visited National Gallery of Art fairly comprehensively over two visits (one, two). Hence, during this stint in the National Gallery I focused on the special exhibits. Here I mention a few that were remarkable in some way (though not necessarily up my alley).

The special exhibit on Andy Warhol focused on his work as a headline painter--making paintings that look like the front page of newspapers (often tabloids)--and as a television producer, both aspects of Warhol's work I wasn't aware of.

The special exhibit on Antico displayed his finely sculpted bronzes. He did an especially good job with hair and with fabrics.

The Pastrana Tapestries are incredible. I can believe the introductory text that claims they're "among the finest gothic tapestries in existence." These large tapestries, appropriate for a great hall, are engaging despite it being a bit hard to make out specifically what's going on. Di Yin says it may be because the inanimate objects (shields, flags, etc.) are brightly colored, not the animate ones. It's thus hard to spot individual people such as the King.

The conservators did a great job conserving the tapestries. (The exhibit had some before and after shots of the preservation process.) The tapestries' wavy surface reminded me of this story published in The New Yorker about digitally preserving a different set of famous tapestries.

The Chester Dale Collection was on display. Chester Dale had a great collection of paintings (mostly French), including Picasso, Renoir, rare blue van Goghs, Matisse, Degas, Modigliani, Cassatt, Cezanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and a number of top-notch Monets. Wow. I took a ton of pictures.

One special exhibit contained only one painting: Samuel Morse's painting Gallery of the Louvre. It belongs in my photographic collection of paintings of paintings.

In the special exhibit on photographer Harry Callahan, I found this rather shocking label attached to one piece:

Immensely supportive of her husband and his work, Eleanor Callahan regarded his photographing her as simply a part of their daily lives. She later recalled that she might be cooking or cleaning when Callahan, seeing something of potential interest, would say, "'Take off your clothes. And that would be that!"

Wow. For what it's worth, Callahan photographed a wide variety of subjects--animate and inanimate--over his fifty-year career.

I liked the I Spy photography special exhibit for its voyeuristic qualities. Walker Evans photographed random people on the subway or on the street. Robert Frank took pictures from a moving bus. Philip-Lorca diCorcia managed to take celebrity/glamour shots of unsuspecting people by manipulating or adding and positioning lights on the street so that if a person walked through the right spot the lighting would be perfect. He has some amazing results.

There was a special exhibit devoted to George Bellows. He painted a variety of subjects. I tend to like his landscapes, both rural and urban.

I liked the Miro special exhibit. I enjoyed seeing how his style evolved before (and after) his switch to weird symbolism. Also, I especially liked the busy patterns in Miro's Constellations group paintings on display (scroll down to second-to-last section for an example). In addition to presenting his work, the exhibit also explained how Miro's life was tossed and turned by Spain's and Catalonia's troubles in the twentieth century, especially with the Fascists.

I took pictures in the few special exhibits that permitted photography and also of some items that struck me in the permanent collection that I hadn't photographed in earlier years.

National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is a mere two blocks from my apartment. I dropped into it sporadically for short visits; science museums aren't really my thing. It's exactly as I remember: filled with fossils and skeletons and more oh my! It covers land, sea, and sky. The fossils are neat and often impressive though not something that I want to stare at for long or read much about.

Sometimes I took pictures on these visits.

One Tuesday when my parents were in town we visited the live butterfly pavilion. (We picked Tuesday because entry is free on Tuesdays.) It was great! See the pictures. The pavilion contains many species of butterflies, no two alike. They have exquisite patterns, all works of art. "I love it," said my mom. "Wonderful." I like the fact that they have to check you for butterflies before you leave--sometimes the butterflies hitch a ride on your clothing or your hat without you knowing it.

Also during this visit we stopped by the special exhibit More Than Meets The Eye on visualizing things that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

We also explored part of (before we ran out of time) the engrossing special exhibit Written in Bone on making anthropologic inferences from bones. It focused mainly on bones found in the Chesapeake Bay region. The exhibit showed how bones can indicate what profession people were (tailor, shoemaker, etc.). It also discussed how bones can show the difference between the upper and lower classes. For instance, upper class people had worse teeth (because they could eat more sugar) and upper class people more often had lead poisoning (because they used metal utensils, often lead, while the lower classes used wooden ones). I guess it's sometimes better to be a member of the lower classes.

I learned what bones are more useful for identification and how anthropologists read them.

The exhibit also showed examples of how bones look after different types of injuries, and how the results depends on whether the damage occurred before, at, or after death. It's fascinating but also a bit disturbing seeing how bones can change in response to normal harms like osteoporosis, lack of exercise, etc.

Elsewhere, the gemstone/jewelry collection is incredible. So pretty!

The Evolving Universe special exhibit showed awesome pictures of nebulas and galaxies.

The special exhibit on 2011 award-winning nature photograph was pretty amazing. Some photography makes it incredibly easy to anthropomorphize animals. Also, many landscape scenes are majestic, especially the winner in the Plant Life category. You can view it and all the photographs. Of course, the feeling is different when the photos are shown as prints the size of posters.

One special exhibit, Titanoboa, simply showed a model of a recently-discovered giant snake. The model is of a 48-foot-long snake eating a crocodile! And this is all based on fossil evidence and hypotheses. The exhibit consisted mainly of informative signs explaining what they've inferred about the snake.

National Museum of American History

Sporadically, I stole time to drop in the National Museum of American History, seeing a couple of exhibits each time. This was easy because it was near my apartment; I often visited it before work.

The museum is huge. I like how it conveys information, especially in the displays in the main halls. It shows objects that are not important in themselves but explains (in three sentences) how each represents its time and reflects a broad societal situation.

I took only a few pictures in the museum, mainly of displays that struck me.

The museum has some singularly important artifacts such as the flag that flew over Baltimore's Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write The Star-Spangled Banner. The flag is large, much bigger than any flag you see nowadays. Also, it has fifteen stars. Incidentally, I learned that Francis Scott Key wrote the song to the tune of a British song (!), To Anacreon in Heaven. I also learned that the base commander's descendants kept the flag for a century and gave clippings of it to friends.

Another important artifact is the original Washington monument/memorial. It's nothing like the current one.

The exhibit on first ladies, their role, and especially their gowns/dresses, is interesting if only for the section of the exhibit that explains that this exhibit existed in one form or another for nearly a hundred years and describes how it has evolved. The exhibit was renovated while I lived in Washington D.C. I saw the new version and liked reading about what causes the first ladies championed in their public lives. This was in the earlier exhibit; I simply noticed it more/paid more attention to it in the new iteration.

I enjoyed the special exhibit on Julia Child, especially the videos of interviews with her and her demonstrations. She's a hoot! Also, now I want to buy a buffalo iron to make it easier to blanch vegetables. I liked this exhibit so much that, every time I went to the museum, I stopped by it (until it closed) to watch more videos.

In one display in another exhibit, I learned that Cincinnati was a popular destination for Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth century. The extensive display explores the phenomenon and its effects.

A nearby, similarly extensive, display about the experience of African Americans in Charleston at the same time is poignant for its dramatic contrast.

The exhibit on invention and play was neat: I enjoyed reading about inventions, inventors, and their processes. There is some interactive stuff here, including a full-sized (mechanical) windsurfer/sailboat simulator. Cool!

One exhibit, by tracing the history of a house, tells a series of household cultural stories (slavery, immigration, and home life changes brought on by war).

Another exhibit presents a portrait of the life & events in a particular year (1939): media, music, radio, world's fair, WPA (Works Progress/Projects Administration), heroes (real and fictional).

The musical instruments exhibit includes four of the world's eleven decorated Stradivari. Why the museum has Italian instruments, I don't know. Nothing in this exhibit is presented in connection to everyday life; as such, the exhibit feels out of place in the museum.

The popular culture exhibit includes Michael Jackson's fedora hat and all the muppets created solely by Jim Henson. They look rather shabby, and there's only one whose name I recognize (Kermit). I'm glad Henson later got help.

The exhibit on the American Presidency has a fun and interesting video showing the various ways the president has been portrayed in popular culture. It uses clips from movies over the last hundred years. I also enjoyed in this exhibit the display about what presidents have done after their term (travel, advocacy, politics, and more). I connected with it because I frequently think about what to do after I stop working.

I was intrigued by the idea demonstrated in the exhibit on Jefferson's Bible. Basically, Jefferson took quotes he liked and made a book of them. I can imagine doing the same using many books.

By the way, although the length of this post may make it seem as if I wrote about every exhibit, I did not. I wrote what I felt like. Some days I wrote about everything I visited; other days I only referenced the exhibits I thought worthy of mentioning.

I didn't even manage to see all the permanent exhibits, let alone all the special exhibits that appeared during my stay in Washington D.C. I saw probably two-thirds of the permanent collection.