Washington DC: Day 5

ART!

Cakes - Wayne Thiebaud (1963)

National Gallery of Art

We visited the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art today. It's a beautiful modern building, home to a more modern collection than the other wing (which we check out another time). The current special exhibit is The Woman In White. I actually preferred some of his paintings that were not part of the Woman in White trilogy, but the story about how these were received at the time in Europe was interesting

First stop at the gallery was to find the 'famous' blue rooster for a photo op. Apparently it's 'a thing'.

Then off to see something on the gallery walls:

Alexander Stirling Calder

Harlequin Musician (1924) - Pablo Picasso

Baby Cradle (1917/18) - Gustav Klimt

Family of Saltimbanques (1905) - Pablo Picasso

Woman with a Hat (1905) - Maurice de Vlaminck

The Open Window (1905) - Henri Matisse

Chestnut Trees in Bloom (1905/06) - Maurice de Vlaminck

White Beeches in Fall (1910) - Christian Rohlfs

The Frugal Repast (1904) - Pablo Picasso

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Museum Scoreboard:

• National Archives - Definite must see, though we really just had time for the big 3 documents: Declaration of Independence, Constitution, Bill of Rights.

• Museum of American History - A casual museum with American cultural type exhibits. Not a staunchly, serious place but some interesting and amusing stuff. I had to explain the classic Julia Child SNL sketch (it was SNL right?) to Nick and Danielle as were walking the Food exhibition which included Julia Child’s actual kitchen. They had my Mom’s olive green crock pot there! Sorry no photo

• Smithsonian National Museum of the America Indian - A good museum. Interesting building, mostly topics that I knew about to some degree but presented well. Until January 2023 there is an outstanding exhibit of Preston Singletary’s glass sculpture work. Really worth checking out.

• National Gallery of Art - East Wing (Modern Art) - As you may know from reading my travel blog entry from the Tate Modern in London, I have an opinion about 'Modern Art'. Most of the art was from the past 125 years and included many well known artists (Picasso, Pollack, Matisse) and many others that I'm not overly familiar with. I'm by no means knowledgeable in arts after you get past the big names. It had a good variety though and we spent all morning enjoying the galleries. Thumbs up!

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Pop Quiz Questions:

1) Why are carrots orange?