About a week after my wife and I returned from Chautauqua in early August, we, plus our daughter, took the trains down to Washington, DC, to visit museums and do the tourist thing.
The trains went from Albany/Rensselaer to NYC/Penn Station and then from Penn to Alexandria, VA. Alexandria is only one stop from DC’s Union Station, and there’s a layover there, so it was a toss-up whether we should have stopped in DC and then caught the DC Metro. But that would have necessitated schlepping our luggage. We arrived on a Sunday.
We stayed at my MIL’s timeshare, a Wyndham property in Old Town Alexandria. It was pretty decent, and it was convenient to catch both the Amtrak and the DC metro to Washington, specifically the Smithsonian stop on the Blue Line.
We took the Metro to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art on Monday, August 5. Our daughter wanted to go there, but I knew almost nothing about it. It was a very interesting place. The recently installed Benin Bronzes have an exciting history. I particularly liked Before Nollywood… The Ideal Photo Studio. It is about photography in Nigeria before the movie boom of the 1990s.
Above is a picture I took in the elevator of some of the things shown at the museum. Below is a piece called Dwellers in the Space of the Unknown, which intrigued me.
I heard music in the gift shop, which I liked. It was Kids African Party. I find most music for children insipid and boring, but this was entertaining enough for me to purchase.
Museum #2
After a meal at a nearby restaurant, we went to the Hirschhorn Museum. A couple of pieces struck my fancy: a comparison between a 19th-century white artist and a more contemporary black artist.
In this case, it’s two oil on canvas pieces. Mrs. Kate A. Moore (1884), painted by John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), is hung next to Cobalt Blue Dress (2020) by Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo (b. 1984).
I conversed with one of the young staff members about why one would redo an existing painting. We talked about contextualization. I might compare it with the idea of watching Hamilton and revisiting American history.
I also saw this particular egg tempera on fiberboard item, a piece I did not know. But it reminded me so much of the musical/movie Cabaret that I assumed it was created in the 1930s. It is George C. Tilyou’s Steeplechase Park (1936) by Reginald Marsh (1898-1954).
The most fascinating room is Four Talks, designed by musician and artist Laurie Anderson. I don’t recall the raven, parrot, or canoe, but the room is still oddly disorienting but fascinating.
Greenery
Then we walked on a hot day in DC, probably in the 90s (32+C). We went past the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial to the United States Botanic Garden. Two things: I had gone there in 1998 when I tried out for Jeopardy in DC, and I always thought it was the Botanical Garden.
Across the street from each other are two different gardens and a building with various kinds of plants, some climate-controlled. The place had a powerful environmental message; it was where I dropped off my recyclable but not returnable water bottle.
At one display, patrons were asked about food, specifically what food reminded them of home. Mine were pork chops, mashed potatoes, and peas from growing up.
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