Hallowed Halls

This was to be our last full day in Washington before our return home, and there was much left to be done. Obviously, we didn't do it. Well, not all of it. We headed out first on the Metro for a visit to the National Portrait Gallery, expecting somehow to be done with that in short order. But we found on arrival that it didn't open until 11:30, so we had to kill some time at the nearest Starbucks--so many of them to choose from!--before getting into the museum.

It's actually two museums, adjacent and connected by long corridors in a single building--the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Walking the corridors...

... one slips almost imperceptibly from one into the next. We started out in the portrait wing. Here's Teddy, again, with a young admirer, whose teacher was trying to shoo her away from my camera, while I was hoping to catch the shot of the girl actually looking at the picture...

We stumbled on a magnificent array of dozens of 19th portraits of Native Americans by the explorer/anthropologist/painter George Catlin...

In the multitude of galleries featuring portraits of the famous and the not-so-famous by the famous and the not-so famous, I particularly liked this one of Dashiell Hammett...

... (gotta love that suit!) while we both loved this clay portrait of Gertrude Stein...

... looking for all the world like the Buddha himself! On the top floor on the Portrait side, we found an excellent collection of (non-portrait) contemporary art, including a couple of epic works by Nam June Paik, using in his familiar electronic media. This one...

... is about two-thirds of a map of American using neon and scores of video monitors, flashing on and off in giant patterns or single units. Endlessly fascinating to watch, and an exciting "portrait" of both the greatness and the challenges of this country. We found some old friends. Thus massive painting...

... by Alfred Jensen reminded us of the small one we have at home. There were also works by actual friends we have known and worked with over the years, like this beautifully polished leaning plank by John McCracken...

... and this delicate assemblage by Betye Saar...

We also found, on the American Art side of the building, a huge retrospective exhibition of the work of Northern California-based artist William T. Wiley, whose sly humor and idiosyncratic narratives we are already much familiar with. It was good to see him recognized with a show of this importance... but this was the one area where photographs were not allowed. Check out some of his imges here.

We were amused, amazed, delighted to find, on the top floor of the American Art side, a great archive of all kinds of Americana at the Luce Foundation Center for American Art. Significant parts of this immense resource are displayed in three levels of narrow, closely packed alleys and. below the display cases, drawers that slide open at the visitor's touch. It's put together like a huge, three-dimensional encyclopedia, amongst whose pages you wander in sheer awe for the potential of the human imagination. Here are but a few examples. Carved animals and birds...

... folk art figures...

... canes:

You'd be amazed, as we were. We could have spent more hours in this incredible resource, but had already outspent our time there. Our intention had been to stop at the National Gallery--or at least the East Wing--on the way to our Capitol appointment at our Congressman's office; but had only the time for a rather hurried walk down 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avnue, past the Capitol...

... to find the Longworth congressional office building; and for a hasty salad lunch in the basement, amidst crowds of staffers, security people, lobbyists, fellow visitors, and maybe even, who knows, a congressperson or two. Quite a fascinating spectacle.

We are not exactly in agreement with our congressman, John Campbell, an Orange County Republican. Ellie and I changed our registration a couple of years ago, in order to vote in a place where our voices might be more contrarian than in our safely liberal district in Los Angeles. Campbell is opposed, of course, to the significant health care reform of the kind we would wish to see; and was a co-sponsor of the bill requiring presidential candidates to submit birth certificates--an obviously inflammatory slap at Obama.

We did not run into Campbell. If we'd had the opportunity, I would have asked politely the reasons for his position on health care and made it clear that we, his constituents, would want him to vote for a public option. I did make that point to a very pleasant young aide in his office, but without the conviction that it would make a difference.

It was another young aide, Michael, an intern, who led our tour. Here he is, with the young daughter of, I think, a Korean family who joined us...

The tour, despite Michael's valiant efforts to keep us amused as we waited in line after line to get to the various locations, was not quite what we had hoped. We admired the grandeur of the dome from the inside...

... the serried statuary--two from each state--the old supreme court chamber, and sat for a few minutes in the gallery of the House chamber, where a congressman was holding forth about the importance of maintaining the already-abandoned anti-ballistic missile system in Easter Europe, which no longer even has the support of the military. Talk about inspiring! We left via the subterranean ways we had arrived, passing by this nice bust of old Abe. I paused to wonder what he'd be thinking of the way things are today...

We leave shortly for a final shot at a couple of the museums we have missed thus far, then head out to the airport to catch a late afternoon flight. I'll be doing one final entry on this travelogue when we get back home...