DC part deux

Ok, in a better mood now. In the lab again with West Side Story on the mp3 player, so cannot help but be in a good mood. So, more about DC. Well, we've been twice now, once a few weeks ago and once a few days ago. I may even have to go again at some point; there is so much to see and it is all so interesting. I could happily spend a day in each of the Smithsonian museums, and that's without starting on all the monuments, parks and interesting governmental buildings that are everywhere in Washington. So far I've only managed four half-Smithsonians, the outside of the Capitol and the White House, a couple of memorials and the Mall*. I have to be honest: the White House was, well, just a big white house with a pillock in it, nothing particularly special really. You can only see from a fairly long distance away and, as I say, it's just a big white house. The Capitol now, that looked impressive. A bit like Saint Paul's and not at all like Westminster. At all. All shiny white, on top of a hill and looking out over a huge green space. As I said yesterday, it's all very noble and very impressive. Unfortunately there were only four tickets between about ten people for the tour when we got there on Saturday so I didn't get to see it, but hey I haven't been round the Houses of Parliament either.

The four Smithsonians I've been half-round, together with some of the highlights are:

• The National Gallery of Art - probably the only time I've spent three hours going round a quarter of an art gallery. Some wonderful pieces of artwork in here, not because they were done by famous people or are particularly iconic in themselves, just that they manage to convey a feeling or a moment spectacularly well. One of my favourites was a painting of two women framed, as it were, by a window. Both were looking straight out at all the people looking at them, one gazing rather dreamily and the other laughing behind her hand. It captured the characters of the girls fantastically and left me and Barbara at least wondering about who it is they were looking at. There was also a picture of Jesus by a Venetian painter (can't remember who but it was in the "Development of Venetian Art" exhibition). It was nothing like a lot of the other iconographic paintings that we'd seen so many of. It was just a close up of a man in pain and sadness looking back over his shoulder. It wasn't until you had a closer look that you realised he was carrying a cross. It was very different from any other picture of Jesus that I'd even seen, and it was very moving. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see a good proportion of the museum because I had to meet Adam to go to...
  
• The National Air and Space Museum** - this is possibly one of the coolest museums I have ever been to. When you consider that a goodly proportion of the advances in aerospace engineering have happened in the States, they're in a pretty good position to have the definitive aerospace museum. Full scale models of Skylab, the original moon lander***, and the Voyager spacecraft and the authentic versions of the Spirit of St. Louis, one of Amelia Earhart's planes and the honest-to-God original Apollo 11 command module. Suffice to say I had a good time. And I got a cool key ring.
  
• The Freer Gallery - this was also pretty wonderful, although in a slightly different way. Rather than being a specific era/movement/style of art, this gallery consists pretty much of the personal collection of Mr. (Arthur, possibly) Freer. It's not a huge place, and so is the only museum I saw the majority of, but it has a huge range of extremely interesting artwork. Freer was apparently very interested in Asian and Islamic art, so there are works from all over the world being presented in a way that you don't normally see. Ancient Arab caligraphy, for example, has always been presented (at least in my experience) as an interesting archeological curiosity rather than the beautiful artwork that it is. It was very interesting to see painting, poetry, sculpture and artifacts on display together, being appreciated for their aesthetic rather than historical value. Plus, there was loads of Japanese art, which anyone who knows me will know I think is cool.
  
• The American History Museum - Dorothy's ruby slippers, Skeksis, Kermit the frog and Deep Blue****. I don't need to say any more. Oh, and the original Star-Spangled Banner, although I admit that probably meant less to me than it did to Mark and Barbara.
  

I do have to admit though, that the whole museum experience was slightly dented by the completely ridiculous amount of security in some places, and this hasn't just been in DC. Ok, so checking big backpacks is probably understandable if you're going somewhere that would be missed if it got blown up. But really, I swear I had to jump through more hoops security-wise to get into the Ronald Reagan building for lunch than I did at Heathrow. Metal detectors, x-ray scanners, ID checks and big blokes with even less sense of humour than immigration officials. Honestly. If you didn't want to blow up a museum beforehand, you certainly did afterwards.

Gar. I am in shout-at-the-radio mood again now. Stupid bloody paranoid Americans. I'm going to go back to the dorm now and have a cup of tea. Probably microwaved.




Bleugh.


*how many points do I get for that? And no, not the shopping one and not the one in London either.
**see what I did there?
***yes, I know there's the same thing in the Science Museum in London, but this was an American version.
****if you don't understand any of those then I'm not going to enlighten you