Another Day...

... in Washington DC, this one quite different. More pictures, today, I hope, than words. We started out from our friends' home...

... headed for the noted Phillips Collection.

... and spent a good couple of hours there, admiring the extraordinary collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modern art. After the Barnes Foundation, where so much depends on the installation, it was refreshing to find a more traditional installation, with individual works nicely spaced for individual viewing, and with excellent, even gallery light. Good enough to explore some outstanding paintings by the likes of...

... Arthur Dove; the detail of a wonderful

... Van Gogh; and a marvelous...

... Marsden Hartley. After a while Ellie and Marjorie...

... needed a brief sit-down, before entering a small gallery filled with this series by Jacob Lawrence inspired by the great immigration of African-Americans from the South to the cities of the North...

I had the good fortune to interview Lawrence once, in Seattle, some years before his death. His work deserves a good deal more attention than it has yet received. Here's a magnificent painting by...

... Richard Diebenkorn, which I remember having seen in the home of the Gifford Phillpses many years ago. Gifford was the nephew of the original collector Phillips, who put this collection together. Lunch in Georgetown at ...

And thence on to Dumbarton Oaks for what we intended to be a quick visit to a show we had read about by the artist Charles Simmonds. It turned out to be something quite different, as we became thoroughly engrossed in an exception display of classical and Byzantine art and artifacts...

... and an incredible collection of Pre-Columbian art in the setting of a magnificent extension to the original Dumbarton Oaks house by the architect Phillip Johnson. Here are some of the pieces, beautifully displayed...

The Dumbarton Oaks Museum is a real treasure, though a little off the regular tourist route. It's notable particularly for the careful installation and labeling of the objects in its collections, making them easy to understand and place in context. The house is worth visiting, too, for its vast and exceptionally beautiful gardens, immaculately kept and rich in both long views...

and short...

It was a truly wonderful experience, to spend an hour perambulating these serene and lovely spaces.

Oh, and about that artist, Charles Simmonds, who has pursued his vision of miniature civilizations for decades: his work is everywhere in evidence. We had expected a regular gallery exhibition but found, instead, a museum-type display case in the main museum, with a detailed introduction to the artist's fascination with the human species and its relation to the animal and plant world; and, installed in showcases interspersed throughout the Pre-Columbian section of the museum, examples of his small works in clay and porcelain--tiny, elaborately-imagined architectural sites and structures, like this walled city...

... and these wilting towers...

... these sexually-charged, club-like phallic shapes and totemic figures--architectural, archeological, anthropomorphic, anthropological, call them what you will--some scattered through the gardens...

... some with tortured faces...

This monstrous, organic shape...

... hangs in the conservatory, swinging lightly in the breeze, a suggestion of fungal roots and inner entrails, the sheer, physical earthiness of our being and our interdependence with all other beings, our rootedness in the ancient world and our connection to the universe. I find Simmonds' work to be among the most challenging, fearsome and thought-provoking that I know.

And... in the evening, a delightful dinner out with our Washington hosts--a small way of thanking them for their kindness and hospitality. We are fortunate indeed to have such friends.