DC 2019 Trip Diary
It took me about 16 months, but it's time to do a data dump from the trip M and I took to Washington, DC last summer. As mentioned in the food summary for the trip, we were gone from July 2 through July 7, 2019. The excuse for the trip was seeing the Rolling Stones live in concert. What else did we do with the trip besides eat and see rock & roll? Spoilers: it was mostly museums.
Independence Day
Our hotel for the trip was in Crystal City, somewhat close to the airport. We woke up on July 4 fully refreshed from the Stones and caught the train into DC.
Our first stop was the Renwick Gallery. This is a delightfully weird little museum near the White House with an eclectic collection of modern art, with most of the collection based in some way on traditional crafts. While we were there they had an extensive exhibition of ceramics by Michael Sherrill, including a lot of really clever teapots. There was also a display of made up flowers by Ginny Ruffner that included both a print version of flower and a 3-d view on a handheld tablet. Perhaps more interesting was the personal collection, which was greatly varied. There was an entire room filled with a wooden temple of sorts, a room full of anti-war art in various mediums, the delightful Game Fish by Larry Fuente and an assortment of other neat things. For a comparatively small museum, the Renwick punches far above its weight, and I recommend it to people who enjoy modern art or who want a museum they can cover thoroughly in a relative short period of time.
The Renwick is technically a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The main building of that institution is shared with the National Portrait Gallery. That dual building was our second destination on Independence Day.
To be perfectly honest, the Presidential Portrait Gallery didn't do much for me. Most of those portraits were relatively uninspired portraits of dead white men, which is was certainly the style for most of American history but isn't terribly interesting from an artistic perspective. There were a few exceptions, like Nixon by Norman Rockwell or Obama and Michelle by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively. The special exhibition Eye To I: Self-Portraits From 1900 to Today was substantially more interesting.
We then walked down the hall into the American Art Museum. This was much more to my taste, particularly the sculpture, which featured The Greek Slave and Undine. Then we went upstairs to the modern art, which featured Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. I also really enjoyed the David Levinthal exhibition, which featured him recreating American history (ok, American myths) with toys and clever photography. He did some great baseball stuff, among others.
We wandered down the Mall and into the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. We wandered a fair bit of the museum, but there was scheduled to be a giant Trump sponsored fireworks display on the Mall that night, so we decided to head back to Crystal City to avoid the crowd. We did watch the fireworks from near our hotel, and they were exhausting. They just went on and on and on, with little variety, but massive amounts of light and volume. The fireworks at the Tribe games are typically more interesting.
Friday, July 5
The only museum I had specifically requested visiting was the Holocaust Museum. I'm Jewish and was raised with this history, and have read extensively on it and seen a lot of documentaries on the topic. Even with a clear knowledge of what I was going to be seeing, it was still emotionally devastating. It's probably one of the best designed museums I've ever seen. It's essential viewing for humans.
After that, we needed some lighter fare. The Hirshhorn is a modern art museum by the Mall. The highlight, by far, was the room with Manifesto. Imagine a room with 13 films running at the same time. Each film stars Cate Blanchett reciting sections of famous art manifestos such as Dada. It's super weird and fun, and I wish I'd had time to watch it all.
It was brutally hot when we were in DC, which is not surprising given that it was July and we were in a literal swamp of humidity. Despite this, we decided to wander the Mall in the evening when it would hopefully be cooler. I had seen most of these monuments on prior visits in 1989 and 2003, but the World War II Memorial had opened since then so I marked that one off the list. Otherwise, we saw all the main memorials. We then returned to the hotel for some showers and delightful air conditioning.
Saturday, July 6
We had to start driving home on Saturday, but after brunch we still had time to visit the National Gallery of Art. Of particular interest to me was a special exhibition of American Pre-Raphaelites. I also enjoyed the Life of Animals in Japanese Art. From the permanent collection, the entire room full of Alexander Calder works was another highlight, as were two paintings by Aaron Douglas. Alas, we did not get even close to going through the entire museum, let alone the attached sculpture garden, before we had to get going.
Errata
M & I know a ton of people in DC, but we only saw two of M's friends because many of our other friends had left town for the holiday weekend. The only thing we really wanted to do that we didn't get to do was the National Museum of African American History and Culture as we got shut out of the required advance tickets. I'm sure we'll try again in the future, hopefully at a time of year with less humidity.
Photos here for my FB friends
Independence Day
Our hotel for the trip was in Crystal City, somewhat close to the airport. We woke up on July 4 fully refreshed from the Stones and caught the train into DC.
Our first stop was the Renwick Gallery. This is a delightfully weird little museum near the White House with an eclectic collection of modern art, with most of the collection based in some way on traditional crafts. While we were there they had an extensive exhibition of ceramics by Michael Sherrill, including a lot of really clever teapots. There was also a display of made up flowers by Ginny Ruffner that included both a print version of flower and a 3-d view on a handheld tablet. Perhaps more interesting was the personal collection, which was greatly varied. There was an entire room filled with a wooden temple of sorts, a room full of anti-war art in various mediums, the delightful Game Fish by Larry Fuente and an assortment of other neat things. For a comparatively small museum, the Renwick punches far above its weight, and I recommend it to people who enjoy modern art or who want a museum they can cover thoroughly in a relative short period of time.
The Renwick is technically a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The main building of that institution is shared with the National Portrait Gallery. That dual building was our second destination on Independence Day.
To be perfectly honest, the Presidential Portrait Gallery didn't do much for me. Most of those portraits were relatively uninspired portraits of dead white men, which is was certainly the style for most of American history but isn't terribly interesting from an artistic perspective. There were a few exceptions, like Nixon by Norman Rockwell or Obama and Michelle by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, respectively. The special exhibition Eye To I: Self-Portraits From 1900 to Today was substantially more interesting.
We then walked down the hall into the American Art Museum. This was much more to my taste, particularly the sculpture, which featured The Greek Slave and Undine. Then we went upstairs to the modern art, which featured Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii. I also really enjoyed the David Levinthal exhibition, which featured him recreating American history (ok, American myths) with toys and clever photography. He did some great baseball stuff, among others.
We wandered down the Mall and into the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. We wandered a fair bit of the museum, but there was scheduled to be a giant Trump sponsored fireworks display on the Mall that night, so we decided to head back to Crystal City to avoid the crowd. We did watch the fireworks from near our hotel, and they were exhausting. They just went on and on and on, with little variety, but massive amounts of light and volume. The fireworks at the Tribe games are typically more interesting.
Friday, July 5
The only museum I had specifically requested visiting was the Holocaust Museum. I'm Jewish and was raised with this history, and have read extensively on it and seen a lot of documentaries on the topic. Even with a clear knowledge of what I was going to be seeing, it was still emotionally devastating. It's probably one of the best designed museums I've ever seen. It's essential viewing for humans.
After that, we needed some lighter fare. The Hirshhorn is a modern art museum by the Mall. The highlight, by far, was the room with Manifesto. Imagine a room with 13 films running at the same time. Each film stars Cate Blanchett reciting sections of famous art manifestos such as Dada. It's super weird and fun, and I wish I'd had time to watch it all.
It was brutally hot when we were in DC, which is not surprising given that it was July and we were in a literal swamp of humidity. Despite this, we decided to wander the Mall in the evening when it would hopefully be cooler. I had seen most of these monuments on prior visits in 1989 and 2003, but the World War II Memorial had opened since then so I marked that one off the list. Otherwise, we saw all the main memorials. We then returned to the hotel for some showers and delightful air conditioning.
Saturday, July 6
We had to start driving home on Saturday, but after brunch we still had time to visit the National Gallery of Art. Of particular interest to me was a special exhibition of American Pre-Raphaelites. I also enjoyed the Life of Animals in Japanese Art. From the permanent collection, the entire room full of Alexander Calder works was another highlight, as were two paintings by Aaron Douglas. Alas, we did not get even close to going through the entire museum, let alone the attached sculpture garden, before we had to get going.
Errata
M & I know a ton of people in DC, but we only saw two of M's friends because many of our other friends had left town for the holiday weekend. The only thing we really wanted to do that we didn't get to do was the National Museum of African American History and Culture as we got shut out of the required advance tickets. I'm sure we'll try again in the future, hopefully at a time of year with less humidity.
Photos here for my FB friends