Category Archives: Museums

Paul Revere House (Boston, Massachusetts, USA)

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Paul Revere House

The Paul Revere House, the colonial home (for about 20 years) of famous legendary American patriot, famous “Midnight Rider,” silversmith, businessman and entrepreneur Paul Revere during the time of the American Revolution, is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston and also the only official Freedom Trail historic site that is a home.

Check out “Freedom Trail“

It occupies the former site of the Second Church of Boston’s parsonage, home to Increase Mather and Cotton Mather, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1676. The original three-story house, built about 1680, was first owned by Robert Howard, a wealthy a wealthy Boston slave merchant. Howard’s L-shaped townhouse contained spacious rooms and its exterior would have been enhanced by features such as a second-floor overhang and casement windows.

From 1770 to 1800, Paul Revere owned this house.  Although he and his family may have lived elsewhere for periods in the 1780s and 1790s, they lived there during the American Revolution – the most transformative and uncertain era of their generation. The rear chimney (c. 1790) including the kitchen (that visitors see in the first room they enter) were believed to have been added during the Revere occupancy.

After Revere sold the house in 1800, the home became a sailor’s boarding house for many years in the nineteenth century and, by the turn of the twentieth century, the old house had become a tenement with the ground floor remodeled for use as shops. At various times, it became a candy store, cigar factory, bank and vegetable and fruit business. In 1902, to prevent demolition, John P. Reynolds Jr. (Revere’s great-grandson) purchased the building and its restoration took place under the guidance of Joseph Everett Chandler, an architect and historic preservationist. In April 1908, the Paul Revere House opened its doors to the public as one of the earliest historic house museums in the United States.

Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the Paul Revere House went through two major and substantial renovation processes.  First, to bring the house in line with the Georgian architectural style  becoming prevalent at that time, the roofline facing the street was raised substantially.   Second, a two-story lean-to was added in the ell between the two 17th-century portions of the house. In 1907–1908, restorers returned the roofline to its original pitch, albeit without a gable (giving rise to a commonly held misconception that the attic had been removed), and the lean-to was removed.

On January 20, 1961, it was designated as a National Historic Landmark and, on October 15, 1966, added to the National Register of Historic Places. It is now operated as a nonprofit museum by the Paul Revere Memorial Association.

The main block of the three-storey house consists of four structural bays demarcated by heavy framing posts and overhead beams, all typical of early Massachusetts Bay timber construction. Within this main block, the larger ground floor room is dominated by its chimney bay and adjoining lobby entrance. As the Revere House was set quite close to neighbors, its double casement windows were installed in the rear elevation rather than the more common placement in a gable.  The two-storey extension, behind the Revere House, was unlike some contemporary Boston houses which had separate kitchen buildings. Its heavy beams, large fireplaces, and absence of interior hallways are typical of colonial living arrangements. Several pieces of furniture, believed to have belonged to the Revere family, are found at the two upstairs chambers.

Despite the renovation (which returned the house to its conjectured appearance around 1700), 90% of the structure (including two doors, three window frames, and portions of the flooring, foundation, inner wall material and raftering) is original to 1680.  However, none of the window glass is original.

In December 2016, the Paul Revere Memorial Association opened, after a purchase in 2007 and US$4 million in renovations, the new, 3,500 sq. ft. Visitor and Education Center, connected to the house by an elevated walkway.  For the first time, the renovations permitted wheelchair access to the second floor of the house. The education center provided additional exhibit space on Revere’s Midnight Ride, his work as a silversmith and his industrial work after the American Revolution.  Classrooms and a library also allowed for expanded research and educational outreach.

Immediately adjacent and across the entry courtyard (the original site of the John Barnard House) is the brick Pierce–Hichborn House.  Built about 1711 as an early Georgian house, it is also operated as a nonprofit museum by the Paul Revere Memorial Association.

Paul Revere House: 19 North Square, Boston, Massachusetts 0213.  Tel: 617-523-2338. Fax: 617-523-1775. E-mail: staff@paulreverehouse.org. Website: www.paulreverehouse.org. Admission: Adults (US$5.00), Seniors and College Students (US$4.50) and Children – ages 5-17 (US$1.00). Open Daily – Summer: April 15 – October 31 (9:30 AM to 5:15 PM), Winter: November 1 – April 14 (9:30 AM to 4:15 PM). It is closed on Mondays during January, February and March as well as Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. The first floor of house is accessible via the courtyard ramps while the second floor is accessed by taking the elevator in the visitor center and then connecting to the house via the walkway.

Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery, a historic art museum housed in the historic Old Patent Office Building (as is the Smithsonian American Art Museum), now the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, is part of the Smithsonian Institution.

Today, the National Portrait Gallery continues to narrate the multi-faceted and ever-changing story of America through the individuals who have shaped its culture and, through the visual arts, performing arts and new media, it presents poets and presidents, visionaries and villains, actors and activists whose lives form our national identity.

Check out “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture” and  “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – Smithsonian American Art Museum”

Abraham Lincoln (Charles Wesley Jarvis, 1861)

Initially restricted to paintings, prints, drawings, and engravings, the collections, over the years, have grown from more than 2,000 items  1981 and, in 1990, the number of images in the museum’s photography collection reached 8,500 objects. As of 2011, the National Portrait Gallery was the only museum in the United States dedicated solely to portraiture.

In 2013, the museum had 65 employees and an annual budget of $9 million.  February 2013, it housed 21,200 works of art, which had been seen 1,069,932 visitors in 2012.  Today, the NPG collection of over 23,000 items, in all media, from daguerreotypes to digital, had grown so large that the exhibit drew its images almost entirely from the museum’s own collection.

Douglas MacArthur (Howard Chandler Christy, c. 1952)

The Hall of Presidents, a hallmark of the NPG’s permanent collection, is the largest and most complete collection in the world, except for the White House collection itself. Containing portraits of nearly all American presidents, the centerpiece of the Hall of Presidents is the famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. How the museum obtains presidential images has changed over the years.

From 1962 to 1987, presidential portraits were usually obtained through purchase or donation but, beginning in 1998, NPG began commissioning portraits of presidents, starting with George H. W. Bush, for its “America’s Presidents” exhibition (Gilbert Stuart’s Lansdowne portrait of George Washington is the grand introductory image to this exhibition). In 2000, NPG began commissioning portraits of First Ladies as well, beginning with Hillary Clinton.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (Thomas Edgar Stephens)

Funds for these commissions are privately raised, and each portrait costs about $150,000 to $200,000. It still continues to acquire portraits (including paintings, sculpture, photographs, caricatures, video, and time-based media) of each succeeding president.

The NPG hosts the prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, a triennial, juried contemporary portrait exhibition widely regarded as the most prestigious portrait competition in the United States.  It also brings commissioned works into the collection. Artists working in the fields of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and other media are allowed to enter.

William T. Sherman (George Peter Alexander Healy, 1866)

Works must be created through a face-to-face encounter with the subject. The winner of this inaugural competition was David Lenz of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He was commissioned to paint a portrait of Eunice Kennedy Shriver (the founder of the Special Olympics), the first portrait commissioned of an individual who has not served as a President or First Lady.

On the left is a portrait of Stephen Van Rensselaer III (John Wesley Jarvis, 1825-35) while on the right is a portrait of Antonia Pantoja (Manny Vega, marble, glass and stone, 2014)

Dave Woody of Fort Collins, Colorado, the 2009 winner, was commissioned to photograph food pioneer Alice Waters, founder of the Chez Panisse Restaurant and Cafe, the Edible Schoolyard and champion of the Slow Food movement.

Samuel Francis Du Pont (Daniel Huntington, 1867-68)

During the 2013 competition, the total prize money of $42,000 was awarded to the top eight commended artists, and the winner received $25,000 and a commission to make a portrait for the museum’s permanent collection. The artist and the NPG curators jointly decided the subject of the commission. The 2013 winner was Bo Gehring of Beacon, New York, who was commissioned to direct a close-up video and sound portrait of jazz musician Esperanza Spalding which drew delight and praise from visitors.

Here is the historical timeline of the gallery:

  • In 1962, the National Portrait Gallery was authorized and founded Congress with the mission to acquire and display portraits of individuals who have made significant contributions to the history, development, and culture of the people of the United States.
  • In 1965 (the bicentennial of James Smithson‘s birth), “Nucleus for a National Collection,” the first NPG exhibit, went on display in the Arts and Industries Building.
  • In 1966, the NPG completed the Catalog of American Portraits, the first inventory of portraiture held the Smithsonian. The catalog also documented the physical characteristics of each artwork, and its provenance (author, date, ownership, etc.). That same year, the museum moved into the Old Patent Office Building with the National Fine Arts Collection.
  • In 1968, Gilbert Stuart’s 2.4 5 m. (8  5 ft.) Lansdowne portrait (commissioned in April 1796  Senator William Bingham of Pennsylvania—one of the wealthiest men in America at the time) of George Washington was exhibited  the National Portrait Gallery, and it remained there on indefinite loan.
  • In 1969, the Old Patent Office Building was renovated the architectural firm of Faulkner, Fryer and Vanderpool.
  • In 1971, the NPG began the National Portrait Survey, an attempt to catalog and photograph all portraits in all formats held every public and private collection and museum in the country.
  • On July 4, 1973, “The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution, 1770–1800,” the first exhibit at the museum dedicated solely to African Americans, was opened the NPG.
  • In 1974, Philanthropist Paul Mellon donated 761 portraits  French-American engraver B.J.F. de Saint-Mémin to the museum.
  • In January 1976, Congress passed legislation allowing the NPG to collect portraits in media other than graphic arts, permitting the NPG to begin collecting photographs.
  • In October 1976, the NPG established a Department of Photographs.
  • 1977, the NPG had three curatorial divisions (Painting and sculpture, prints and drawings, and photography).
  • In September 1978, Facing the Light: Historic American Portrait Daguerreotypes,” the gallery’s first photography exhibit, was opened.
  • In February 1977, the museum acquired an 1880 self-portrait  Mary Cassatt, one of only two painted
  • In December 1977, the museum acquired a self-portrait  celebrated early American artist John Singleton Copley. The roundel (a circular canvas), one of only four self-portraits, was donated to the NPG the Cafritz Foundation.
  • In May 1978, Time magazine donated 850 original portraits which had graced its cover between 1928 and 1978.
  • In May 1979, a major exhibit of these Time magazine pieces debuted.
  • In April 1979, the Coolidge family of Boston donated five portraits of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Adams, and James Madison Gilbert Stuart, known as the Gibbs-Coolidge set, to the NPG.
  • In December 1979, the Henry Cabot Lodge family in Massachusetts donated a bust of Alexander Hamilton  John Trumbull (which may have been sculpted from the portrait which was later used for the $10 bill) and a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Representative Fisher Ames to the museum.
  • In April 1980, Varina Webb Stewart and Joel A.H. Webb, Jefferson Davis‘ great-grandchildren, presented important portraits of Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina Howell Davis, to the NPG.
  • In 1980, the museum obtained, through purchase and loan, a number of works of graphic artist Howard Chandler Christy for exhibit. Works displayed ranged from his “Christy girl” recruiting posters to history-based works such as Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States.
  • On February 7, 1980, the Museum of Fine Arts and NPG agreed to jointly purchase the two famous, unfinished Gilbert Stuart portraits of George and Martha Washington  owned  the Boston Athenaeum, which loaned them to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1876. Under the agreement, the paintings would spend three years at the National Portrait Gallery (beginning in July 1980), and then three years in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts.
  • In 1981, two major 19th-century photography collections were added the museum. They acquired the Frederick Hill Meserve Collection of 5,419 glass negatives produced  the studio of famed Civil War photograph Mathew Brady and his assistants and, using historically accurate chemicals, paper, and techniques, prints were made of the negatives and the prints placed on rotating display.  Later, they purchased, from the Meserve family, 5,400 Civil War-era glass negatives produced  photographer Alexander Gardner including the famous “cracked-plate” portrait of Abraham Lincoln (taken in February 1865), the last photographic portrait of Lincoln taken before his death in April 1865.
  • In 1982, the museum purchased, for $1 million, a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Thomas Jefferson, to a private collector. A portion of the purchase price came from the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Jefferson’s historic plantation home of Monticello. The two parties agreed have the portrait spend time at both locations.
  • In 1984, museum purchased an Edgar Degas portrait of his friend, Mary Cassatt, for $1.3 million.
  • On December 31, 1984, a thief pried open a display case and stole four handwritten documents accompanying several portraits of Civil War generals. One of the documents was written and signed President Abraham Lincoln. The remaining three were written and signed  Civil War generals Ulysses S. Grant, George Meade, and George Armstrong Custer.
  • On February 8, 1985, all four documents were recovered when police arrested Norman James Chandler, a part-time mechanic’s assistant from Maryland, for the theft. Chandler quickly pleaded guilty. He was sentenced in April 1985 to two years in jail (with all but six months suspended) and two years of probation, and required to pay a $2,000 fine.
  • In 1985, the the NPG acquired their first nude work – a self-portrait painting Alice Neel painted when was 80 years old.
  • In 1987, noted photographer Irving Penn donated 120 platinum prints of fashion and celebrity portraits he produced over the past 50 years.
  • In 1990, the first daguerreotype (an early photographic process) of African American abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass (one of only four daguerreotypes of Douglass known to exist) was acquired.
  • In 1996, the NPG obtained, for $115,000, the earliest known daguerreotype portrait of abolitionist John Brown (created  African-American photographer Augustus Washington), whose 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry helped to spark the Civil War.
  • In January 2000, the NPG closed for a renovation of the Old Patent Office Building. Intended to take two years and cost $42 million, the renovation took seven years and cost $283 million.
  • In the fall of 2000, Neil Primrose, 7th Earl of Rosebery, offered to sell The Lansdowne portrait given as a gift to British Prime Minister William Petty FitzMaurice (the 2nd Earl of Shelburne, and later became the first Marquess of Lansdowne, hence the name of the portrait). Lansdowne died in 1805, and in 1890 the painting was purchased  the 5th Earl of Rosebery.
  • On March 13, 2001, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation donated $30 million to buy the Lansdowne portrait. The $30 million donation included $6 million to put the portrait on a national tour for three years (the NPG was closed for renovations until 2006), and $4 million to construct a new display area (named for media baron Donald W. Reynolds, who created the foundation) in the Old Patent Office Building to display it.
  • In 2006, the NPG hosted the first Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition (named after long time docent and volunteer Virginia Outwin Boochever),. It drew more than 4000 entries, from which 51 finalists were chosen.
  • After the 2008 presidential election, Obama supporter Tony Podesta and his wife, Heather, donated graphic artist Shepard Fairey‘s ubiquitous “Hope” poster of Barack Obama to the National Portrait Gallery.
  • In November 2010, the NPG hosted “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” a major new exhibit, from October 30, 2010, to February 13, 2011, of 105 pieces curated  David C. Ward and Jonathan Katz. The exhibit focused on depictions of homosexual love through history, and was the first exhibit hosted a museum of national stature to address the topic and was also the largest and most expensive exhibit in the NPG’s history. Included in the in the exhibit was a four-minute, edited version of “A Fire in My Belly,” a short silent film  artist David Wojnarowicz. Eleven seconds of the video depicted a crucifix covered in ants.
  • In 2012, the NPG sponsored “Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets,” a new temporary exhibit which focused on images of great American poets.

The museum’s more notable art pieces include:

Among the museum’s more prominent collections are:

  • Alexander Gardner (photography)
  • Howard Chandler Christy (graphic arts)
  • Irving Penn (photography)
  • Mathew Brady (photography)
  • Time magazine covers (graphic arts)

The Great Hall

Although most of the interior has been altered for use as a museum, parts of the Old Patent Office interior are still visible.   From Robert Mills’ graceful double curved cantilevered stone staircases, one then enters the Model Hall on the building’s third floor and, turning right, leads one down the Great Hall and into more of the Patent Office’s galleries.

The painting Grant and His Generals” (Ole Peter Hansen Balling) above the graceful double curved cantilevered stone staircases

After a fire in 1877 destroyed the third floor of the building, the Great Hall, the reception area where President Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln greeted guests attending the second inaugural ball, was remodeled by Adolf Cluss and his partner, architect Paul Schulze. The resulting interior space, a dramatic riot of color, was originally called the Model Hall. It is accentuated with late-nineteenth-century architectural highlights and has a hand-laid encaustice tille floor, curving double staircase, soaring vaulted ceilings and lit by stained glass windows.

The hall celebrates great American scientists and four of them (Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, Thomas Jefferson, and Eli Whitney) are represented on large medallions in the corners of the Hall.   It seats 300 (seated dinner) and  366 (Reception) people, respectively.

The enclosed, 28,000-sq. ft. Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard, one of the largest and most magnificent event spaces in Washington, DC., was opened to the public on November 18, 2007 and was named after Washington philanthropists and art collectors Robert and Arlene Kogod.  With an elegant glass canopy, the courtyard, designed  world-renowned architects at Foster + Partners in London, provides a distinctive, contemporary accent to the museums’ Greek Revival building.

Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard

The wavy glass-and-steel roof, appearing to float over the courtyard, lets in natural light but protects visitors from the elements. So that the weight of the roof does not affect the historic building, the double-glazed glass panels, set in a grid, are completely supported  eight anodized aluminum-clad columns located around the perimeter of the courtyard.

Michael Jackson (Andy Warhol, 1984)

The courtyard’s interior design, created  internationally acclaimed landscape designer Kathryn Gustafson of Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd., features four water scrims (each one-quarter inch deep and allowed to traverse the entire length of the courtyard); ficus and black olive trees; a variety of shrubs and ferns as well as plantings in white marble containers on a black granite floor.

Today, the Kogod Courtyard is a popular meeting place in DC. There is plenty of seating, free wifi, and a cafe with snacks for museum visitors open from 11:30 AM until 6:30 PM. It was named one of the “new seven wonders of the architecture world”  Condé Nast Traveler magazine.

National Portrait Gallery: Victor Bldg., 750 Ninth Street NW Suite 41, Washington, D.C. 20001.  Tel: (202) 633-8300. Open Wednesday–Sunday, 11:30 AM – 7 PM.

Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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Smithsonian American Art Museum

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM), formerly called the Smithsonian Art Collection, National Gallery of Art (not to be confused with the current National Gallery of Art), National Collection of Fine Arts, and National Museum of American Art, is a part of the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum adopted its current name in October 2000.  Together with the Renwick Gallery, its branch museum, SAAM holds one of the world’s largest and most inclusive collections of art (from the Colonial period to the present) made in the United States.

Most exhibitions in the museum take place in the old Patent Office Building (shared with the National Portrait Gallery), the museum’s main building which contains expanded permanent-collection galleries and public spaces.  The craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.

SAAM, describing itself as being “dedicated to collecting, understanding, and enjoying American art,” celebrates the extraordinary creativity of artists whose works reflect the American experience and global connections.

Through its national education program, the museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public, maintaining seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide.

Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program and, as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

Adoration of St. Joan of Arc – a fire-etched wood relief by J. William Fosdick in 1910 to appeal to wealthy industrialists who favored richly designed interiors and uplifting art. Fosdick tapped into the fantasy of a more spiritual past and, when it was exhibited, it was praised for craftsmanship that rivaled a Medieval masterwork.

The collection, first on display in the original Smithsonian Building (now nicknamed the “Castle”), was begun in 1829 and grew as the Smithsonian buildings grew, with the collection housed in one or more Smithsonian buildings on the National Mall.

“America Receiving the Nine Muses,” by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, was painted on an imposing, gilded Steinway piano and presented to Pres. Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. Painted on the piano’s lid, it merged the Classical theme of the Muses, with America as the new standard bearer of Western culture, and is decked out in symbols of Americana, from eagles to garlands to the coats-of-arms of the first thirteen states.

By the 1920s, space had become critical and, in order to display its collection of fine art, The Smithsonian renovated the Old Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C.’s downtown cultural district.  In 1968, in its current location, the Smithsonian American Art Museum was opened to the public.

Check out “Smithsonian Castle”

“Preamble,” a show of American ingenuity by Mike Wilkins created in 1959 to mark the Constitution’s bicentennial, is a 1,000-piece puzzle using a collection of vanity license plates, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, to phonetically spell out the preamble to the US Constitution in abbreviated script.

Now the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s main building, it is now a National Historic Landmark. An example of Greek Revival architecture, it was designed by architects Robert Mills and Thomas U. Walter.

Yielding to the Ancestors while holding the Hands of (Lonnie Holly, 1992)

The building was restored during the 1990s and, during the 2000-2006 renovation, many of the building’s exceptional architectural features were restored including  the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows and skylights as long as a city block.

The Libyan Sibyl, by William Wetmore Story, (1861-68, marble), was inspired by events leading up to the Civil War. Described by Story as “my anti-slavery sermon in stone,” it depicts the Libyan Sibyl, the eldest of the legendary prophetesses of antiquity, as she foresees the terrible fate of the African people.

During the renovation, the Lunder Conservation Center, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art, the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium and the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard were also added to the building.

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly, a complex work of art created by James Hampton over a period of 14 years (1950-64), is an array based on several religious visions that prompted him to prepare for Christ’s return to earth. The ​“third heaven” is based on scriptures citing it as the ​“heaven of heavens” — God’s realm.

The renovation of the building was completed on July 1, 2006 and, in 2008, the American Alliance of Museums awarded reaccreditation to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The Falling Gladiator, by William Rimmer, was based on a sculpture, from ancient Greece and Rome, of a mortally wounded man. This subject echoed the suffering of the United States on the eve of the Civil War. When the artist began work in January of 1861, six states had seceded from the Union, and the attack on Fort Sumter was just three months away.

The museum has a broad variety of American art, with more than 7,000 artists represented, and covers all regions and art movements found in the United States.

Washinton Resigning his Commission (Ferdinand Pettricj, c. 1841)

SAAM contains the world’s largest collection of New Deal art; a collection of contemporary craft, American impressionist paintings, and masterpieces from the Gilded Age; photography, modern folk art, works by African American and Latino artists, images of western expansion, and realist art from the first half of the twentieth century.

Among the Sierra Nevada, California (Albert Bierstadt, 1868, oil on canvas)

Among the significant artists represented in its collection are Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, David Hockney, Georgia O’Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Albert Bierstadt, Frances Farrand Dodge, Edmonia Lewis, Thomas Moran, James Gill, Edward Hopper, John William “Uncle Jack” Dey, Karen LaMonte and Winslow Homer.

An Eclogue (Kenyon Cox, 1890, oil on canvas)

The museum has two innovative public spaces, both opened in July 2000. The 20,400 sq. ft. Luce Foundation Center, on the third and fourth floors of American Art Museum, is the fourth center to bear the Luce Family name and the first visible art storage  study center Washington, D.C..

Luce Foundation Center

It allows visitors and patrons to browse more than 3,300 works of various niche art, usually not part of a main exhibition or gala special, in 64 secure glass cases which quadruples the number of artworks from the permanent collection on public view.

 

It features paintings densely hung on screens; sculptures; crafts and objects by folk and self-taught artists arranged on shelves. Large-scale sculptures are installed on the first floor. The center has John Gellatly’s European collection of decorative arts.

The Lunder Conservation Center is the first art conservation facility to allow the public permanent behind-the-scenes views of the preservation work of museums. Through floor-to-ceiling glass walls, conservation staff is visible to the public, allowing visitors to see, firsthand, all the techniques which conservators use to examine, treat, and preserve artworks.

The center has five conservation laboratories and studios equipped to treat paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, sculptures, folk art objects, contemporary crafts, decorative arts, and frames, using various specialized and esoteric tools, such as hygrothermographs, to maintain optimal temperature and humidity to preserve works of art.

The Center Staff from both the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery work in the Lunder Center.

The Vine (Harriett Whitney Frishmuth, 1921-23)

Smithsonian American Art Museum: 8th & F Streets NW, Washington, D.C.. Coordinates: 38°53′52″N 77°01′24″W.

Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, actually a collection of institutions housed in the historic, gloriously renovated Old Patent Office Building, served as one of the earliest United States Patent Office buildings.  Here, Neo-Classicism meets 21st-century exuberance.

The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture

Covering an entire city block defined by F and G Streets and 7th and 9th Streets NW, just south of  Chinatown in downtown Washington, it now houses two Smithsonian Institution museums – the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The building’s Greek Rival-stye facade

It also houses the Lawrence A. Fleischman Gallery of the Archives of American Art; an art conservation facility (Lunder Conservation Center); an enclosed, 28,000-sq. ft. courtyard (Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard); a 20,400 sq. ft. open storage facility (Luce Foundation Center); a new 356-seat underground auditorium (Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium) and other operations within the Old Patent Office complex. By the end of 2007, more than 786,000 people had visited the two museums and, 10 years later, during the time of my visit, 1.3 million people have visited the place.

Check out “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art – National Portrait Gallery” and Portraiture and “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture – Smithsonian American Art Museum”

Before it became what it is today, through the Civil War and into the post-war period, the building was once home to many early government departments. It was used as a hospital, and The Bureau of Indian Affairs, the General Land Office, and the Bureau of Pensions jointly occupied the building with the Patent Office.

National Portrait Gallery

Both Clara Barton and American poet Walt Whitman worked as nurses there during the American Civil War. From 1854 to 1857, Barton worked in the building as a clerk to the Patent Commissioner, the first woman federal employee to receive equal pay. From January 24 to June 30, 1865, Waltman, who frequented “that noblest of Washington buildings” and read to wounded men, worked in Bureau of Indian Affairs before being fired for having a copy of Leaves of Grass in his desk.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Here is the historical timeline of the building:

  • In 1836, construction of the building was started.
  • In 1851, architect Robert Mills was summarily dismissed as Congressional committees questioned his competence and his insistence on design changes that inserted unnecessary supporting columns and tie-rods. Construction continued under the direction of Thomas U. Walter, one of Mills’ harshest critics
  • During the Civil War, the building was turned into military barracks, hospital, and morgue. Wounded soldiers lay on cots in second-floor galleries, among glass cases holding models of inventions that had been submitted with patent applications.
  • In 1865, the building was completed
  • In March 1965, it was chosen as the venue for Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Ball.
  • In 1877, the building’s west wing suffered a fire, destroying some 87,000 patent models
  • From 1877–1885, it was restored by Adolf Cluss in the style he termed “modern Renaissance.”
  • In 1887, the Bureau of Pension moved to the new  Pension Bureau Building.
  • In 1898, the General Land Office and the Bureau of Indian Affairs vacated the building.
  • In 1932 the United States Civil Service Commission and the Government Accounting Office occupied the building after the Patent Office vacated it.
  • In 1942, the Government Accounting Office vacated the structure after its new headquarters nearby was complete.
  • In 1952, legislation to tear down the building and sell the land so a private parking garage could be built on the centrally located site was introduced in Congress in the waning days of the 82nd United States Congress but did not pass.
  • On March 21, 1958, Congress unanimously passed legislation authorizing the transfer of the building to the Smithsonian for a national art museum. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the legislation a few days later. Congress appropriated $33.5 million for the renovation.
  • In 1962, Congress passed legislation establishing the National Portrait Gallery
  • In November 1963, the Civil Service Commission moved out of the structure.
  • Starting in 1964, the Faulkner, Kingsbury & Stenhouse firm of architects supervised the renovation of the interior as museum space.
  • In November 1964, preparations for the buildings renovation began
  • On January 12, 1965, the building was designated as a S. National Historic Landmark.
  • By May 1965, the Grunley, Walsh Construction Co. began demolition of non-historic interior structures.
  • On October 15, 1966, it was added to S. National Register of Historic Places (NRHP reference No. 66000902).
  • By April 1968, the $6 million renovation was complete
  • In January 1968, the National Museum of American Art (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and the National Portrait Gallery opened. The north wing housed the art museum and the south wing housed the portrait gallery. Office space and a cafe occupied the east wing. The center courtyard had outdoor eating space for the cafe and several large trees.
  • In 1970, the renovation won the American Institute of Architects National Honor Award.
  • In 1995, the Smithsonian revealed that the building was in serious disrepair. The roof leaked, netting had to be placed in some galleries to catch falling ceiling plaster, window frames were rotting, the floor tiles in the Great Hall were crumbling, and the exterior facade was so degraded it was shedding fist-sized pieces of rock.
  • In January 1997, the Smithsonian announced that the building would close in January 2000 for a two-year, $42 million renovation (the estimated cost of the renovation then grew, initially in 2000 to $110-120 million). Hartman-Cox Architects was hired to oversee the conservation and repair. To be restored were the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, large windows, and skylights as long as a city block.
  • Just three years later, as the renovation was about to begin, the cost of repairs had risen to $110 million to $120 million.
  • Prior to the building’s closure in January 2000, a decision was reached to allot about one-third of the building’s total space to the National Portrait Gallery while simultaneously eliminating the informal north–south division between the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Smithsonian resolved the dispute practically – Art that best fit an exhibition space got it. Modern art, which often tends toward large canvases, was installed on the high-ceilinged third floor.
  • By March 2001, as the cost of the renovation rose to $180 million, Nan Tucker McEvoy (a California newspaper heiress and arts patron) donated $10 million for the renovation.
  • Later in 2001, the Henry Luce Foundation gave another $10 million.
  • In June 2001, reconstruction costs were estimated at $214 million.
  • In July 2001, the reopening was pushed back even further to July 2006.
  • In 2003, the government increased its contribution to $166 million and more than $40 million in private funds had been raised.
  • In August 2003, Congress approved a major change to the renovation design – adding a glass roof to the open courtyard in the center of the Old Patent Office Building.
  • In March 2004, the Smithsonian announced that architect Norman Foster of Foster and Partners would design the glass canopy.
  • In early November 2004, the National Capital Planning Commission(NCPC), which has statutory authority to approve all buildings and renovations in the D.C. metropolitan area, approved the preliminary design for the glass canopy.  That same month, real estate development executive Robert Kogod and his wife, Arlene (heiress to Charles E. Smith Construction fortune) donated $25 million to complete the canopy. By then, costs had risen to $298 million. $60 million in private funds still needed to be raised.
  • In January 2005, the United States Commission of Fine Arts, an advisory commission on design, approved the canopy.
  • In April 2005, the Smithsonian said that the canopy would not be ready by the time the museum reopened in July 2006, and would be installed in 2007.
  • On June 2, 2005, the the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) reversed its preliminary approval of the canopy
  • On August 4, 2005, the Smithsonian brought five alternatives to the NCPC.
  • On September 8, 2005, the NCPC reversed itself yet again, and approved one of the revised designs. The delay cost the Smithsonian $10 million.
  • In October 2005, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation made a $45 million donation to the NPG to finish both the building renovation and the canopy. The Smithsonian agreed to call the two museums, the conservation center, courtyard, storage facility, and other operations within the Old Patent Office complex the “Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture” in appreciation for the gift.
  • On July 1, 2006, after undergoing extensive renovations, the building and the Smithsonian American Art Museum was reopened. The total cost of the building’s renovation was $283 million.
  • In just two months, attendance at the renovated building rose significantly to 214,495.
  • On October 7, 1968, the National Portrait Gallery opened to the public.
  • In September 2007, video security cameras were hastily installed to stop vandalism as some patrons spit on art they did not like, while others kissed or touched some paintings.

Luce Foundation Center

The massive building, designed in the Greek Revival style by architect Robert Mills and Thomas U. Walter, took 31 years to complete. Mills spanned the interior spaces with masonry vaulting without the use of wooden beams. Skylights and interior light courts filled the spaces with daylight. It has a sandstone and marble façade, and a central portico modeled after the the Parthenon of Athens, a departure in Washington where previously ambitious public buildings had been based on Roman and Renaissance precedents.

The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture: 8th and F St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20001.  Tel: 202.633.1000 (recorded information/live voice).  E-mail:  info@si.edu.  Website:   www.si.edu/visit.  Coordinates: 38.89778°N 77.022936°W

National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center (Washington D.C., USA)

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National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center

The National Museum of American History (NMAH): Kenneth E. Behring Center, a museum that is part of the Smithsonian Institution, collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific and military history. The first of the National Mall’s post-war Brutalist behemoths. It consists of three H-shaped floors with a central axis leading to exhibition space on either side.

The south facade of the museum

Opened in 1964 as the Museum of History and Technology, it was one of the last structures designed by the renowned architectural firm McKim Mead & White, the firm that initiated the Classical Revival on the Mall with its 1910 Beaux Arts National Museum of Natural History. In 1980, the museum was renamed the National Museum of American History to represent its mission of the collection, care, study, and interpretation of objects that reflect the experience of the American people.

1 West

From September 5, 2006 to November 21, 2008, the museum was closed when it underwent an US$85 million renovation.   Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, led by Gary Haney, provided the architecture and interior design services for the renovation.

Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology

Major changes made include a new, five-storey, skylit atriums surrounded by displays of artifacts that showcase the breadth of the museum’s collection; a new, grand staircase that links the museum’s first and second floors; a new welcome center; the addition of six landmark objects to orient visitors; new galleries such as the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Hall of Invention; and an environmentally controlled chamber to protect the original Star-Spangled Banner.

Archive Center

In 2012, the museum began a US$37 million renovation of the west wing; adding new exhibition spaces, public plazas, an education center, panoramic windows overlooking the National Mall on all three floors and new interactive features to the exhibits. On July 1, 2015, the first floor of the west wing reopened and, in 2016 and 2017 respectively,  the second and third floors of the west wing were reopened.

Linda and Pete Clausen Hall of Democracy

Visitors can enter the vast NMAH building either from the on-grade National Mall entrance or from the below-grade Constitution Avenue entrance (a walled terrace bridges the differing heights), both minuscule apertures that are not fitting entrances that furnish a sense of grandeur or importance to a museum built to tell America’s story.  At its National Mall entrance is Infinity, a 7.3 m. (24-ft.) tall abstract sculpture (one of the first abstract sculptures displayed at a major public building in Washington D.C.) dedicated in 1967. Designed by José de Rivera and created by Roy Gussow, the sculpture is a 4.9 m. (16-ft.) long, polished stainless steel ribbon on top of a granite tower.

Alexander Calder’s steel sculpture Gwenfritz.  In the background is the National Museum of African American History and Culture

We entered the museum via the latter. Here, on the west side, is Alexander Calder‘s sculpture, Gwenfritz, a 35-ton steel abstract stabile (named after its socialite patron Gwendolyn Cafritz) installed in a fountain and dedicated to the museum on June 2, 1969. The long entrance hall, like many other areas of the building, is poorly illuminated and dispiriting. During our visit, the west side of the second floor was undergoing refurbishment through the end of 2017, and the west side of third floor until 2018.

Artifact walls line the first and second floor center core, with dimly lit 84 m. (275 ft.) of glass-fronted cases, each crammed with hundreds of random objects, big and small, are organized around themes that include arts; popular culture; business, work and economy; home and family; community; land and natural resources; peopling America; politics and reform; science; medicine; technology; and the United States’ role in the world.

A landmark object highlights the theme of each wing of the museum’s three exhibition floors. These include the John Bull locomotive, the Greensboro, Woolworth’s North Carolina lunch counter (where four legends from North Carolina A&T State University staged a sit-in in 1961 to protest segregation), a one of a kind draft wheel and, from pre-existing exhibits, the 1865 Vassar Telescope, a Red Cross ambulance and a car from Disneyland‘s Dumbo Flying Elephant ride.

John Bull Locomotive of 1831

The first floor contains a café, the main museum store, the Constitution Avenue lobby (1 Center) as well as a space for temporary exhibits. 1 East, the first floor’s East Wing, houses the General Motors Hall of Transportation which has series of two transportation-related exhibits that are roughly related – “America on the Move” (opened November 22, 2003) and its companion exhibition, “On the Water: Stories from Maritime America” (opened on May 20, 2009).  One of the best parts of the museum, the John Bull locomotive is the signature artifact.

America on the Move: On the Interstate – 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix convertible and 1986 Dodge Caravan

“America on the Move,” designed by the Museum Design Associates of Cambridge, Mass.; AMAZE Design of Boston; and the Smith Group, of Washington, D.C., encompasses nearly 26,000 sq. ft. on the first floor of the museum, and includes 340 objects and 19 historic settings in chronological order.

Roadside Communities: Tourist cabin at Ring’s Rest (Muirkirk, Maryland).  On the left is a 1934 Ford Deluxe Roadster

City and Suburb: Fageol Twin Coach “Old Look” Liquefied-Propane Gas-Powered Bus, 1950 (2)

It takes visitors on a fascinating journey, from the coming of the railroad to a California town in 1876 to the role of the streetcar and the automobile in creating suburbs to the global economy of Los Angeles in 1999, as they travel back in time and experience transportation, through multimedia technology and environment, as it changed America, seeing historic artifacts as they once were, a vital part of the nation’s transportation system and of the business, social, and cultural history of the country.

1926 Ford Model T Roadster on its side on a Turn Auto

A Streetcar City: Electric streetcar, 1898

The Smithsonian’s popular and voluminous collection of the many and varied forms of rare, fascinating, and important transportation is showcased in historic settings brought to life by large mural backdrops, 73 cast figures and soundscapes.

On the School Bus: 36-passenger Dodge school bus, 1936

The People’s Highway: Route 66

It  includes the horse-drawn cart, early automobiles, the electric car, buses, a Chicago Transit Authority “L” car,  a massive 199-ton, 92-foot-long “1401” Southern Railway locomotive and a gigantic 1930’s steam engine plus a 40-foot stretch of the famed Route 66.

On the Water:  Stories from Maritime America

The brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed “On the Water: Stories from Maritime America,” a pleasing and instructive museum experience on the left side of the entrance of General Motors Hall of Transportation, leads the visitor through 7 topical/chronological sections that span American maritime history from 1450 to the present.

Ocean Crossings

It explores the many ways in which Americans, from Colonial times to the present, have pursued commerce at sea and on America’s extensive coastal and inland waterways through impressive artifacts, flawless audiovisual aids, instructive texts, and a powerful aesthetic.

Web of Connections

The 8,500 sq. ft. exhibit seamlessly carries the visitor through topics as diverse as commercial fishing, passenger liners, the slave trade, container ships, and the contributions of the merchant marine to victory in World War II.

Tobacco ship Brilliant

On display are rigged ship models (including a large model of the tobacco ship Brilliant) representing the web of vessels that transported sugar, tobacco and slaves; a wooden snuff box carved into the shape of a potbellied man (with one eye bulging, the other missing) that connects vast trade systems to everyday consumer habits; a real-life steam engine room; a Fresnel lighthouse lens that lit waters 17 miles afar; a tucked-away safety vest invention that appears to be a twin mattress folded, diaper-like, under the wearer’s torso; and the first sliver of gold found at Sutter’s Mill that precipitated the California Gold Rush.

Lighting a Revolution

The “Lighting a Revolution” exhibition, opened at 1 East to commemorate the centennial of Thomas Edison’s light bulb, considers experiments with electricity before Edison’s, the “Invention Factory” at Menlo Park, how Edison created a market for his product, and the impact of electricity in factories, on city streets, and in the home.

The exhibition features a bulb from a public demonstration of Edison’s light in Menlo Park during Christmas week, 1879; and early electrical appliances for the home, some of which caught on, such as electric fans, and some which did not, namely the electric marshmallow toaster.

Lemelson Hall of Invention and Innovation

The large but sparsely furnished “Lemelson Hall of Invention and Innovation,” opened July 1, 2015, features “Places of Invention,” Draper Spark!Lab and “Inventive Minds.”  “Places of Invention” is centered on the theme of innovation, where the museum is transforming how its audiences will experience history.

Inventive Minds

“Inventive Minds,” a small gallery, introduces visitors to the work of the Lemelson Center, particularly its efforts to document diverse American inventors.  Draper Spark!Lab, a hands-on exhibit, has the Vassar Telescope as its signature artifact.

Places of Invention

The exhibition features 37 objects illustrating the inventions at the heart of each case study. Highlighted objects include a Technicolor camera used to film The Wizard of Oz; a turntable used by Grandmaster Flash; the prototype of the first computer mouse invented by Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute (on loan from SRI International); 1886 Columbia Light Roadster men’s high-wheel bicycle; an example of the Medtronic 5800 Model External Pacemaker invented by Earl Bakken; and several prototypes representing cutting-edge clean energy inventions coming out of Fort Collins.

In addition, there are five interactive stations set up on tables where visitors can participate in fun, hands-on learning experiences such as designing their own eight-bit icon (Silicon Valley section) or learning and practicing their DJ “scratching” skills (The Bronx section). However, objects such as a jukebox, a Howdy Doody puppet and a pink Patsy Cline costume do not necessarily bring the word “invention” to mind.

Vault door marking the entrance to the Gallery of Numismatics

The Gallery of Numismatics, opened July 1, 2015 at 1 West, delves into the world-class National Numismatic Collection (NNC), one of the Smithsonian’s oldest and most treasured collections (with more than 1.6 million objects), to uncover stories related to the origins, innovations, messages, artistry and allure of money.

Collecting Money and the World’s Gold

Entered via a vault door, it showcases more than 400 objects from the NNC, some of which are among the rarest in the world. The exhibition, thematically organized into five sections, allows visitors to learn about the origins of money, new monetary technologies, the political and cultural messages money conveys, numismatic art and design, and the practice of collecting money.

Origins – 168 pound stone ring from Yap Island

Featured American objects includes a storied 1933 Double Eagle, a personal check signed by Pres. James Madison in 1813, a 1934 US$100,000 note and a Depression-era $1 clam shell. International artifacts include a 168-pound stone ring used to make payments on Island of Yap, a 465 B.C.; a decadrachma coin from Syracuse, Sicily; a 14th-century Ming Note from China and a 1762 8 Real Coin from Mexico (also known as a Spanish piece of eight).  The gallery will also showcase the famous Josiah K. Lilly Jr. collection of gold coins and the Grand Duke Georgii Mikhailovich collection of Russian coins (thought to be the finest outside of Russia).

Stories on Money

“Stories on Money,” a numismatic exhibition housed in a small room, comprehensibly traces the historical and aesthetic evolution of US banknotes and coinage through a skillfully culled collection.

Female Figures on Money

“Food: Transforming the American Table, 1950-2000,” a 3,800 sq. ft. exhibition opened last November 20, 2012 in 1 East, is a creative blend of objects, graphics, video and an interactive, communal table that highlights how American eating and shopping habits have changed during those five decades.

Julia Child’s Home Kitchen

Julia Child‘s Home Kitchen, the opening story of the museum’s first major exhibition on food history, contains the tools, appliances, equipment, and furnishings arranged exactly as they were when Julia donated it to the museum. New and Improved!” explores the innovations behind some of the major changes in food production, distribution, preparation, and consumption since the 1950s.

Wine at the Table: Innovations at the Vineyard and the Winery

At Wine for the Table, discover how new technologies, innovators, and changing attitudes led to the tremendous growth and expansion of wine and winemaking, an important story in postwar America, in all 50 states by 2000.

The large, communal table in the center of the exhibition

At Open Table, the public is invited take a seat at a large, communal table, in the center of the exhibition, and engage in conversation about a wide range of food-related issues and topics, sharing their own thoughts and experiences about food and change in America.

American Enterprise

The 8,000 sq. ft. American Enterprise, opened last July 1, 2015 at 1 West, focuses on the role of business and innovation from the mid-1700s to the present.  It chronicles the tumultuous interaction of capitalism and democracy that resulted in the continual remaking of American business—and American life.

Westinghouse Compound Engine

Visitors are immersed in the dramatic arc of labor, power, wealth, success, and failure in America. It traces the development of the United States from a small dependent agricultural nation to one of the world’s largest economies through the following 4 chronological eras: the Merchant Era (1770s – 1850s), the Corporate Era (1860s – 1930s), Consumer Era (1940s – 1970s), and the Global Era (1980s – 2010s). On display are John Deere’s plow, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, Barbara McClintock’s microscope, Stanley Cohen’s recombinant DNA research notebook, Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephones, Alfred Bloomingdale’s personal credit cards, a New York Stock Exchange booth from 1929, an early Monopoly board game and one of Michael Dell’s early computers.

The second floor of the museum, whose lobby leads out to Madison Drive and the National Mall, houses the museum’s new welcome center and a store. 2 West, the west wing of the second floor, has the George Washington statue (created in 1840 for the centennial of Washington’s birthday) as its signature artifact. The Wallace H. Coulter Unity Square, at 2 West, is the floor’s new program space dedicated to immersive activities and performances that richly illustrate America’s participatory democracy. At the center of Unity Square, is the Greensboro lunch counter, a small section of the original F.W. Woolworth’s Lunch Counter from Greensboro, N.C. 2 East, at the east wing of the second floor, has exhibitions that consider American ideals.

The Star Spangled Banner Exhibit

The original, newly conserved Star Spangled Banner Flag, in 2 East, the center of the second floor, is displayed in a dimly lit room, at the heart of the museum, with a climate-controlled environment to help preserve its color and fabric..  During the War of 1812, it was the same flag seen by Francis Scott Key come morning, after a long nighttime battle, above Fort McHenry, outside Baltimore, Maryland, signifying that the U.S. defenses had held.

Check out “Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine – Birthplace of the Star-Spangled Banner“

This marked the penultimate major battle in the war, which ended a few weeks later. It inspired him to write the poem which is now the U.S. national anthem. In the days and years after the battle, the flag was flown in all kinds of weather, and parts were snipped off as souvenirs. Just across the room from the flag is an interactive display by Potion Design featuring a full-size, digital reproduction of the flag that allows patrons to learn more about it by touching different areas on the flag.

LEGO Statue of Liberty

The 9 ft. tall Statue of Liberty, at 2 West, is made of sand green LEGO bricks and weighing 125 pounds without its steel support.

George Washington Statue (Horatio Greenough, 1841)

The 12-ton marble George Washington Statue, atop a granite pedestal and base, was created in 1841 (on the occasion of the centennial of the first president’s birthday) by Horatio Greenough.  Envisioned to be a symbolic representation of Washington as a great exemplar of liberty, it depicts Washington wearing a chest-baring toga.

Within These Walls Exhibit

The 4,200 sq. ft. Within These Walls Exhibit, opened last May 16 2017 in 2 West, tells the stories of five families who lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts, about 30 miles north of Boston, over the years and made history in their kitchens and parlors, through everyday choices and personal acts of courage and sacrifice. Through their lives, the exhibition explores some of the important ways ordinary people have been part of the great changes and events in American history.

The partially reconstructed Georgian-style, two-and-a-half-story timber-framed house, built around 1700

At the center of the gallery is the largest artifact in the museum, a partially reconstructed Georgian-style, two-and-a-half-story timber-framed house, built around 1700, that stood for 200 years at 16 Elm Street and was saved from demolition by an Ipswich citizen and then brought to the Smithsonian Institution.

The exhibition also features an 18th-century tea table; an anti-slavery almanac and the Wedgwood Anti-Slavery medallion; a Philco radio from the 1930s; and World War II-era cookbooks, posters, rationing coupons and a proximity fuse used to detonate bombs and artillery shells.

The American Presidency – A Glorious Burden

3 Center, the center of the third floor, presents The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, which explores the personal and public lives, ceremonial and executive actions of the 43 men who have held that office and had a huge impact on the course of history in the past 200 years. Composed of 11 thematic sections, the exhibition addresses such topics as inaugural celebrations, presidential roles, life at the White House, limits of presidential power, assassinations and mourning, the influence of the media, and life after the presidency.

Hat worn by Lincoln to Ford’s Theater on the night of his assasination

The role of the presidency in American culture is brought to life by more than 900 objects, including national treasures from the Smithsonian’s vast presidential collections.

The horse-drawn carriage that carried Ulysses S. Grant in his second inaugural parade in 1873

They include Abraham Lincoln‘s life mask; a Lewis and Clark Expedition compass; the horse-drawn carriage that carried Ulysses S. Grant in his second inaugural parade in 1873; a radio microphone used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to give his fireside chats during World War II; an early teddy bear (named after Theodore Roosevelt) and Bill Clinton‘s saxophone.

The First Ladies of America

The First Ladies of America, a popular permanent exhibit also at 3 center, encourages visitors to consider the contributions and changing role played by the first lady and American women over the past 200 years by exploring the unofficial but important position of First Lady and the ways that different women have shaped the role to make their own contributions to the presidential administrations and the nation.

White House China Collection

The exhibition features, as a mark of changing times, more than two dozen gowns from the Smithsonian’s almost 100-year old First Ladies Collection.  It includes those worn by Frances Cleveland, Lou Hoover, Jacqueline Kennedy, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama.  A section, entitled “Changing Times, Changing First Ladies,” highlights the roles played by Dolly Madison, Mary Lincoln, Edith Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson and their contributions to their husband’s administrations.

Martha Washington’s Silk Gown, 1780s

National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center: 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW,  National Mall,  Washington, D.C. Admission is free. Open daily (except December 25), 10 AM – 5:30 PM.

National Museum of Natural History (Washington D.C., USA)

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National Museum of Natural History

The Neo-Classical style  National Museum of Natural History, administered by the Smithsonian Institution, is a natural history museum dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts.

It fosters significant scientific research and produces educational programs and exhibitions that present the work of its scientists to the public. Its facilities include the Museum Support Center (Suitland, Maryland), a marine science center in Fort Pierce (Florida) and field stations in Belize, Alaska and Kenya.

Petrified Wood

Pre-Cambrian Banded Iron Ore (Jasper Knob, Michigan)

Here are some interesting trivia regarding the museum:

  • It has the largest natural history collection in the world, with over 146 million specimens of human remains, human cultural artifacts, plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks and meteorites. They include 30 million insects, 4.5 million plants preserved in the Museum’s herbarium, 7 million fish (stored in liquid-filled jars) and 2 million cultural artifacts (400,000 of which are are photographs housed in the National Anthropological Archives). Through an off-site active loan and exchange program, the museum’s collections can be accessed. Around 3.5 million specimens are out on loan every year and the rest of the collections not on display are stored in the non-public research areas of the museum and at the Museum Support Center.
  • It is the third most visited museum in the world
  • The museum on was one of the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to hold the national collections and research facilities.
  • It is the most visited natural history museum in the world
  • It is the most visited museum (of any type) in North America.
  • With 8 million visitors in 2013, it is the most visited of all of the Smithsonian museums
  • The main building has an overall area of 122,632 sq. m. (1,320,000 sq. ft.) with 30,200 sq. m. (325,000 sq. ft.) of exhibition and public space.
  • The  building, as part of the 1901 McMillan Commission plan, was the first structure constructed on the north side of the National Mall
  • The structure cost US$3.5 million (about US$85 million in inflation-adjusted 2012) dollars.
  • It houses 415 full time employees
  • It is also home to about 185 professional natural history scientists, the largest group of scientists dedicated to the study of natural and cultural history in the world.
  • It is only one of about six museums in the United States that has a T. rex skeleton.
  • Research in the museum is divided into seven departments: mineral sciences, anthropology, botany, entomology, invertebrate zoology, paleobiology and vertebrate zoology.

Replica of Olmec Collosal Head (Tenochtitlan, Veracruz, Mexico, 1200-900 BCE)

Here’s the historical timeline of the museum:

  • In 1846, the United States National Museum, initially housed in the Smithsonian Institution Building (better known today as the Smithsonian Castle) was founded as part of the Smithsonian Institution.
  • In 1858, a formal exhibit hall opened.
  • On June 28, 1902, due to its growing collection, Congress authorized construction of the new National Museum Building (known today as the Arts and Industries Building), covering a then-enormous 9,100 sq. m. (2.25 acres) and built in just 15 months at a cost of US$310,000.
  • On March 1881, the National Museum Building was opened.
  • On January 29, 1903, in order to provide the Smithsonian Institution with more space for collections and research, a special committee (composed of members of Congress and representatives from the Smithsonian’s board of regents) published a report asking Congress to fund a much larger structure than originally planned.
  • On March 1903, the regents began considering sites for the new building
  • On April 12, 1903, they settled on a site on the north side of B Street NW between 9th and 12th Streets. The D.C. architectural firm of Hornblower & Marshall was chosen to design the structure.
  • On July 1903, testing of the soil for the foundations.
  • On March 17, 1910, the Natural History Building (as the National Museum of Natural History was originally known) opened its doors to the public.
  • On June 1911, the building was fully completed.
  • In 1997, Kenneth E. Behring donated US$20 million to modernize the museum.
  • On November 2003, the museum opened the US$100 million Behring Hall of Mammals
  • In 2004, the museum received US$60 million for the Sant Hall of Oceans and received a US$1 million gift from Tiffany & Co. for the purchase of precious gems for the National Gem Collection.
  • In June 2008, the Victoria and Roger Sant family donated US$15 million to endow the new Ocean Hall at the museum.
  • On August 2009, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of its acquisition of the Hope Diamond, the gemstone was given its own exhibit and a new setting
  • In March 2010, the museum opened its US$21 million human evolution hall.
  • On March 2012, the museum received a US$35 million gift to renovate its Dinosaur Hall.

The Rotunda with its centerpiece stuffed African bush elephant named Henry

We entered the museum from the National Mall side.  At the Rotunda, we were greeted by the 8 ton, 14 ft. tall male African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) named Henry (at that time was the world’s largest land mammal on display in a museum), an iconic centerpiece installed here since 1959.  It was donated to the Smithsonian by  Josef J. Fénykövi. Fénykövi, a Hungarian big-game hunter who, in November 1955, tracked the elephant in the Cuando River region of southeastern Angola. 

Easter Island moai (stone figure)

This museum has 3 floors, but only 2 really have exhibits. At the north lobby entrance (Constitution Ave.), there is a Tyranosaurus rex skull, an intriguing Easter Island stone figures or moai (one of two acquired in 1888, one a complete statue, the other a head), probably one of the most photographed objects in the museum.

Skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex

Near a staircase is the 19th century Tsimshian Totem Pole from the  from Fort Simpson, British Columbia, at the American Northwest Coast, in 1876.

The Totem Post

The David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins, opened on March 17, 2010 (the museum’s 100th anniversary), is “dedicated to the discovery and understanding of human origins.”  Named for David H. Koch (who contributed US$15 million to the $20.7 million exhibit), it occupies 1,400 sq. m. (15,000 sq. ft.) of exhibit space at the first floor.

Walking Upright

This permanent exhibition focuses on the epic story of how the human species evolved over 6 million years, adapting and surviving during an era of dramatic climate change.

Creating a World of Symbols

It features more than 285 early-human fossils and artifacts, lifelike full-size reconstructions of several hominid species and 23 interactive experiences, including a morphing station where visitors can see what they would look like as early humans.

Specimens include 75 replica skulls and an interactive human family tree that follows six million years of evolution.  The Changing the World Gallery focuses on issues surrounding climate change and humans’ impact on the world.

The What Does It Mean To Be Human Exhibit, designed by Reich + Petch, is the Hall’s core concept idea.  It focuses on milestones of Human Evolution (Walking Upright, Bigger Brains, Creating a World of Symbols, etc.).  It also covers the Smithsonian’s significant research on the geological and climate changes which occurred in East Africa during significant periods of Human Evolution.

Meet Homo Floresiensis

The exhibit highlights an actual fossil Neanderthal and replicas created by John Gurche, a famed Paleo artist. The exhibit also provides a complementary web site (which provides diaries and podcasts directly from related fields of research) and a Companion Book, What Does It Mean To Be Human (written by curator Richard Potts and Christopher Sloan).

Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals

The multi-award-winning   Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals, a permanent first floor exhibition designed by Reich + Petch, represents the oldest exhibition in the National Museum of Natural History. It has the largest collection of vertebrate specimens in the world (nearly twice the size of the next largest mammal collections), including historically important collections from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its collection, initiated by C. Hart Merriam, was expanded in the 1890s-1930s by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (later the Department of the Interior).

It tells the story of mammal evolution across 225 million years, with more than 274 meticulously preserved specimens on permanent display, classified by continent and habitat. They include a koala, hippopotamus, gorilla, the tiny Spix’s disk-winged bat, the massive walrus, the familiar Eastern gray squirrel, the rare okapi,  a white rhinoceros (collected by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1909) and  a short-beaked echidna (one of only five species of monotremes, or egg-laying mammals).  There’s also a bronze recreation of Morganucadon oehleri, the earliest-known mammal, which lived 210 million years ago.

Designed with families in mind, its mammal specimens are presented as works of modern art within strikingly minimal environmentals. Here, we discovered mammal’s evolutionary adaptions to hugely diverse contexts, and ultimately discovered that they too are mammals.

Wide Open Prairie

The hall includes four discovery zones with hands-on activities that help visitors explore an array of mammal adaptations and habitats around the world. An 8-minute film at the Evolution Theater  surveys the mammal family tree and the vast changes its members have been through in the past 225 million years.

Sant Ocean Hall

The 23,000 sq. ft. Sant Ocean Hall, the largest renovation of the museum since it opened in 1910, was named for the Roger Sant family, who donated US$15 million to endow the new hall and other related programs. Opened on September 27, 2008, this hall includes 674 marine specimens and models drawn from the over 80 million specimens in the museum’s total collection, the largest in the world.

Basilosaurus cetoides

This one-of-a-kind interpretive, permanent exhibition, at the first floor,  demonstrates how the ocean is intrinsically connected to other global systems and the daily lives of people around the world.

North Atlantic Right Whale

The collection includes: a real, life-size, coelenterate-long North Atlantic Right Whale named Phoenix (who scientists have been tracking since her birth in 1987), a 1,500-gallon aquarium, one female giant squid displayed in the center of the hall and a male displayed off to the side, an adult coelenterate, a Basilosaurus cetoides and 3 skeletons of ancient whale relatives (one of which had legs).


At the Ocean Explorer Theater, we watched a short film inviting visitors to explore the multitude of life that thrives two miles below the surface on board Alvin, a deep-ocean submersible. We also watched an innovative video presentation of global ocean data projected on a 6-ft. diameter sphere.

Global ocean data projected on a 6-ft. diameter sphere.

Other exhibits include bubblegum coral  (the largest-known deep sea coral, named for its bright pink color and gumball-like branch tips), a massive fossilized jaw of C. megalodon (a gigantic shark that prowled the ocean between 2.6 and 23 million years ago), carpet anemone, a snapping shrimp, a long-spined sea urchin plus 21 other species in the living Indo-Pacific coral reef.

African Voices

The African Voices  exhibit and associated website “examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influence of Africa‘s peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment.”

Mud Masons of Mali

This permanent first floor exhibit includes historical and contemporary objects from the museum’s collection and commissioned sculptures, textiles, and pottery. Video interactives and sound stations provide selections from contemporary interviews, literature, proverbs, prayers, folk tales, songs and oral epics.

Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Materials

The 20,000 sq. ft.  Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems and Minerals, at the second floor, is one of the most significant collections of its kind in the world.

Rubies and Sapphires

This permanent exhibition currently houses over 15,000 individual gems in the collection, as well as 350,000 minerals, 300,000 samples of rock and ore specimens and approximately 35,000 meteorites (which is considered to be one of the most comprehensive collections of its kind in the world).

Anthromorphic Stone

It showcases the most famous pieces of gems and minerals in the collection include the Hope Diamond (donated in 1958 by Harry Winston), the Star of Asia Sapphire (one of the largest sapphires in the world) and the Gachalá Emerald, one of the world’s largest, at 858 carats (172 g.)

Hope Diamond

It also encompasses re-created mines and galleries that present important research in mineral chemistry and physics; plate tectonics, seismology and the study of volcanoes; and planetary science.

Shattered Worlds

The specimens are augmented by two dozen interactive computer presentations and videos, large panels of stunning artwork, and a real-time display of global earthquake data.

Calcite (Elinwood Mine, Smith County, Tennessee)

Some its most important donors, besides Janet Annenberg Hooker, are Washington A. Roebling (the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge)  who gave 16,000 specimens to the collection; Frederick A. Canfield, who donated 9,000 specimens to the collection; and Dr. Isaac Lea, who donated the basis of the museum’s collection of 1312 gems and minerals.

Macleay’s Spectre (Extatosoma tiaratum, Australia)  at O. Orkin Insect Zoo

The O. Orkin Insect Zoo,  a permanent second floor exhibition sponsored by Orkin (a pest control company), offers visitors a variety of exhibits about insects, plenty of hands-on activities and entomologists and features live insects as well as daily tarantula feedings.

Brazilian red and white tarantula

Different habitats have been created to show the type of insects that live in different environments and how they have adapted to a freshwater pond, house, mangrove swamp, desert and rain forest.

Osteology: Bone Hall – Man and the Manlike Apes

The Osteology: Bone Hall, the oldest exhibition in the National Museum of Natural History, displays almost 300 vertebrate skeletons grouped by their evolutionary relationships.

Perciform Fishes

This permanent second floor exhibition highlights the diversity and unity of every major group of vertebrates, supporting ideas of evolution and common ancestry.

The diversity and unity of every major group of vertebrates is highlighted, supporting ideas of evolution and common ancestry.

 

Eternal Life in Ancient Egypt

The Eternal Life in Ancient Egypt Exhibit, at the second floor, West Wing, showcases more mummies than have been on display at any time in the museum’s history. The exhibition combines rare artifacts and cutting-edge research tools to illuminate how Smithsonian scientists have pieced together the lives of ancient Egyptians through their burial practices and rituals in preparation for their eternal life.

The Butterflies + Plants: Partners in Evolution, an exhibit at the second floor (off the Rotunda, above the Mammals Hall) designed by Reich + Retch, innovatively combines a traditional exhibition with experiential learning provided by the live Butterfly Pavilion.  It allows “visitors a rare, up-close look at living butterfly and plant specimens, observing the many ways in which butterflies and other animals have evolved, adapted, and diversified together with their plant partners over tens of millions of years.”

Learning About Elephants, a learning station (added in the mid-2000s) on the second floor balcony, overlooking the “Fényköv Elephant” in the Rotunda, teaches the public about these endangered land mammals and their habitat, an important way to build support for their conservation. 

The 30-year-old, 2,300 sq. m. (25,000 sq. ft.) Dinosaur and Fossil Hall  was closed (since spring of 2014) during our visit as it was then undergoing a US$45 million (US$35 million of which was donated by billionaire David H. Koch on May 2012) upgrade (the largest, most extensive exhibition renovation in the museum’s history) and was anticipated to reopen in 2019. “The Last American Dinosaurs: Discovering a Lost World,” a temporary exhibit, was opened last November 25, 2014 and will end upon the completion of the museum’s newly renovated dinosaur and fossil hall.

Check out “The Last American Dinosaurs: Discovering a Lost World“

It consists of 46 “complete and important specimens” of fossilized skeletons and cast models of dinosaurs, including casts of a Tyrannosaurus rex  facing a Triceratops. The Triceratops exhibit, showing the first accurate dinosaur skeleton in virtual motion, was achieved through the use of scanning and digital technology. Its centerpiece is the 11 m. (35-ft.) long, 85% complete skeleton of “Wankel” or “Devil” rex, the first T. rex fossil skeleton owned by the museum (which until now has only had the cast of a skull).  It was  found in 1988 on United States Army Corps of Engineers-owned land in the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge in Montana,  was obtained (via a 50-year lease) by the Smithsonian on June 2013 and arrived, packed up in 16 crates, at the National Museum of Natural History on April 15, 2014.

“The Last American Dinosaurs: Discovering a Lost Work” – a temporary exhibit

The museum also has an IMAX Theater for feature-length films, and the Discovery Room, a family- and student-friendly hands-on activity room on the first floor.  In the lower level, there is a bird exhibit, Urban Bird Habitat Garden, with all the migratory and native birds to Washington D.C.

Rai (status stone, Yap, quarried 1904 on Palau)

National Museum of Natural History: 10th St. & Constitution Ave. NW, National Mall, Washington, D.C. 20560, United States. Open daily (except December 25), 10 AM – 5:30 PM. Admission is free.

National Gallery of Art – West Building: American Art (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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Gallery 60-B

A number of permanent collection galleries in the National Gallery of Art display an iconic collection of masterworks of American painters from the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s world-renowned 17,000-piece art collection (worth US$2 billion) of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, prints, drawings and photographs.  Acquired in late 2014, it allows for an enriched and enhanced presentation of the history of American painting.

Watson and the Shark (John Singlton Copley)

Gallery 60-A displays the Portrait of Richard Mentor Johnson (1843, oil on canvas) of successful Philadelphia portrait painter John Neagle.  In Gallery 60-B is the 1778 version of Watson and the Shark, by John Singleton Copley, that depicts the 1749 rescue of the English cabin boy Brook Watson from a shark attack in Havana, Cuba.

Epes Sargent (John Singleton Copley, c. 1760)

Eleazar Tyng (John Singleton Copley, 1772)

The second, full-size 1778 replica is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a third, smaller, 1782 version is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Flanking this painting are two other John Singleton Copley oil on canvas portrait paintings – Eleazar Tyng ( 1772) and Epes Sargent (c. 1760).

The Corinthian Maid (Joseph Wright, 1782-85)

Oedipus Cursing His Son Polynices (Henry Fuseli, 1786)

Gallery 61 houses the The Corinthian Maid (1782-85) and Italian Landscape (1790), both by Joseph Wright; John Johnstone, Betty Johnstone and Miss Wedderburn (1790-95) by Sir Henry Raeburn; The Lavie Children (c. 1770) by Johann Zoffany; and Oedipus Cursing His Son Polynices (1786) by Henry Fuseli; among others.

Thomas Amory II (John Singleton Copley, 1770-72)

The House of Representatives (Samuel Finley Breese Morse)

At Gallery 62 is the Portrait of a Gentleman (c. 1760, oil on canvas) by English-born Joseph Blackburn; the Portrait of Thomas Amory II (c. 1770–1772, oil on canvas) by John Singleton Copley; Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming (1788) by Charles Willson Peale; Lady With a Harp (1818) by Elizabeth Ridgely; and the monumental history painting The House of Representatives (1822, oil on canvas) by Samuel Finley Breese Morse (a portraitist of some renown and the inventor of the telegraph) among others.

The Departure (Thomas Cole, 1837)

Gallery 64 houses poet-painter Thomas Cole’s The Departure and The Return, oil on canvases commissioned, as a pair, by wealthy landowner William Peterson Rensselaer.  Both were painted in 1837.

Sunrise in the Catskills (Thomas Cole, 1826)

Other Thomas Cole paintings on display include Sunset in the Catskills (1826) and A View to the Mountain Pass Called Notch of the White Mountains (1839).

Lake Lucerne (Albert Bierstadt, 1858)

The Stranded Ship (Asher Brown Durand)

Also on display are Autumn – On the Hudson River (1860, oil on canvas) and The Spirit of War (1851, oil on canvas), both by Jasper Francis Cropsey; Lake Lucerne (1858, oil on canvas) by Albert Bierstadt and The Stranded Ship (1884, oil on canvas) by Asher Brown Durand.

A Pastoral Visit (Neil Norris Brooke, 1881)

At Gallery 65 is A Pastoral Visit (1881, oil on canvas), a genre scene, by Richard Norris Brooke, depicting African-American life in the 1870 s and 1880s; Waiting for the Stage (1851, oil on canvas) painted by Baltimore native Richard Caton Woodville in Paris; Leisure and Labor (1858, oil on canvas), commissioned by William T. Walters (founder of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore) and painted by Maryland artist Frank Blackwell Mayer; The Tough Story – Scene in a Country Tavern (1837, oil on wood) by William Sidney Mount (America’s most celebrated painter of genre scenes); Cottage Scenery (1845), a work that blends genre and landscape by George Caleb Bingham; and the intriguing and unusual trompe-l’oeil still life Poor Artist’s Cupboard (c.1815, oil on wood) by Charles Bird King.

Check out “Walters Art Museum”

The Return of Rip Van Winkle (John Quidor, 1849)

Take Your Choice (John Frederick Peto, 1885)

Also on display are The Return of Rip Van Winkle (1849) by John Quidor; Take Your Choice (1885, oil on canvas) by John Frederick Peto; The Old Violin (1886. oil on canvas) by William Michael Harnett; and The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846) and Cottage Scenery (1845), both by George Caleb Bingham.

Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial

Gallery 66 is home to Augustus Saint-Gauden‘s plaster version of the The Shaw 54th Regiment Memorial, a bas-relief sculpture group 15 ft. high, 18 ft. wide and 3 ft. deep which is a monument to the Union Army’s first African American regiment that fought in the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln, (George Peter Alexander Healy, 1860)

The original 1897 memorial stands in bronze on the edge of Boston Common. The exhibit, opened last September 21, 1997, includes plaster sketches and related studies. 

Check out “Boston Commons” 

Maryland Heights – Siege of Harpers Ferry (William Macleod)

Hanging nearby and sharing this connection to the Civil War are two Corcoran Collection paintings – George Peter Alexander Healy‘s portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1860), the first portrait for which the President posed following his election, and William MacLeod’s Maryland Heights: Siege of Harpers Ferry.

Niagara (Frederic Edwin Church, 1857)

Gallery 67 displays the magnificent Niagara (1857, oil on canvas) and the tropical view Tamaca Palms (1854, oil on canvas), both by Frederic Edwin Church; the idyllic Buffalo Trail: The Impending Storm (1869, oil on canvas) the final great Western landscape of Albert Bierstadt.

Ruins of the Parthenon (1880, oil on canvas, Sanford Robinson Gibbon)

Tamaca Palms (Frederic Edwin Church, 1854)

Also on display are Natural Arch at Capri (1871, oil on canvas) by William Stanley Haseltine; Second Beach, Newport (1878-80, oil on canvas) by Worthington Whittredge; Beach at Beverly (1869-72, oil on canvas) by John Frederick Kensett; and Ruins of the Parthenon (1880, oil on canvas) by Sanford Robinson Gifford.

Breezing Up – A Fair Wind (Winslow Homer, 1873-76)

Gallery 68 is devoted to the NGA’s significant Winslow Homer collection, a dozen important works by Homer spanning five decades of his prolific and varied career are on view – the late coastal scene A Light on the Sea (1897, oil on canvas), Sparrow Hall (1881-82, oil on canvas) and Breezing Up (A Fair Wind) (1873-76, oil on canvas).

A Light on the Sea (Winslow Homer, 1897)

The Brown Family (Eastman Johnson, 1869)

The atmospheric river scene Battersea Reach (c. 1863), of James McNeill Whistler, hangs nearby. Also on display is The Brown Family (1869, oil on paper on canvas) by Eastman Johnson and The Biglin Brothers Racing (1872, oil on canvas) by Thomas Eakins.

Symphony in White, No. 1 The White Girl’ (James Whistler)

Gallery 69 displays the evocative Singing a Pathetic Song (1881, oil on canvas), an evocative depiction of the home musicale, of Philadelphia native Thomas Eakins; and Symphony in White, No. 1 The White Girl’ (1861-62) by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Eleonora O’Donnell Iselin (John Singer Sargent, 1888)

Ellen Peabody Endicott (John Singer Sargent, 1901)

Also on display are the regal likeness of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd White (Mrs. Henry White) (1883, oil on canvas), Eleonora O’Donnell Iselin (Mrs. Adrian Iselin) (1888, oil on canvas); and Ellen Peabody Endicott (Mrs. Corninshield Endicott) (1901, oil on canvas), all by John Singer Sargent.

Valdemosa, Majorca – Thistles and Herbage on a Hillside (John Singer Sargent), 1908)

At Gallery 70 is the fishing village scene En route pour la pêche (Setting Out to Fish) (1878, oil on canvas), depicting a scene in the quiet fishing village of Cancale, and the vibrant mountain view Simplon Pass (1911), and Valdemosa, Majorca: Thistles and Herbage on a Hillside (1908), all by John Singer Sargent.

Simplon Pass (John Singer Sargent, 1911)

Poppies, Isles of Shoals (Childe Hassam, 1891)

Also on display are Poppies, Isles of Shoals (1891, oil on canvas) and Allies Day, May 1917 (1917, oil on canvas), both by Childe Hassam; the quiet and charming still life Flowers on a Window Ledge (c. 1861, oil on canvas) by John La Farge; and the luminous Mount Monadnock (1911/1914, oil on canvas) by Boston-born and New Hampshire-raised Abbott Handerson Thayer.

April Landscape (Daniel Garber, 1910)

Gallery 71 houses impressionist landscapes with American subjects – Flying Shadows (1883) by Kenyon Cox; The Mill in Winter (1921) by Edward Willis Redfield; May Night (1906) by Willard Leroy Metcalf. Josephine and Mercie (1908) by Edmund James Tarbell; Penelope (1905) by Gari Melcher; and April Landscape (1910) and South Room – Green Street (1920), both by Daniel Garber.

The House Maid (William McGregor Paxton, 1910)

All feature women subjects (often relatives of the artist) in domestic interiors engaged in activities including reading, sewing, writing, and embroidery. Intimate paintings such as The House Maid (1910) by William McGregor Paxton, and Young Woman in a Kimono (c.1901) by Alfred Henry Maurer; also contain elegant still lifes of personal and decorative objects. Two additional portraits – My Daughter (1912) by Frank Weston Benson, and Sita and Sarita (c. 1921), by Cecilia Beaux, complete the room.

Flying Shadows (Kenyon Cox, 1883)

National Gallery of Art – West Building: Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C..  Tel: +1 202-842-6511.  Website: www.nga.gov. Admission is free.

National Gallery of Art – Masterpieces of American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection, 1700–1830 (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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Masterpieces of American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection, 1700–1830

The “Masterpieces of American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection, 1700–1830” is a permanent installation celebrating a generous promised gift to the National Gallery of Art (NGA). One of the largest and most refined assemblages of early American furniture and decorative arts in private hands, it was acquired, over the course of four decades, by George M. and Linda H. Kaufman of Norfolk, Virginia.  In October 2010, it was promised to the National Gallery of Art.

Philadelphia desk and bookcase, ca. 1755-65, with two heavily carved side chairs with hairy ball and claw feet. These high-style chairs were commissioned by John and Elizabeth Cadwalader, ca. 1770, for their home in Philadelphia.

In 1986, the NGA devoted ten rooms (more than 4,000 sq. ft., previously used for temporary exhibitions such as The Treasures of Tutankhamun and American Light: The Luminist Movement, 1850–1875) to an extensive exhibition based exclusively on the Stellar Collection of Early American Furniture, Dutch and American Paintings, and some 100,000 works on paper acquired, with great connoisseurship together, by the Kaufmans.

Impressive specimen-top center table, ca. 1827–1830; whose massive frame was crafted by Philadelphia furniture maker Anthony Quervelle (1789–1856).

The installation will, in addition, also include paintings by celebrated American artists in the Gallery’s collection such as Gilbert Stuart. The new installation, highlighting nearly 100 examples of early American furniture and decorative arts from this distinguished collection, includes some 40 French floral watercolors by Pierre Joseph Redouté plus American, Chinese, and French porcelains. In the emergent American Republic, furniture was an expression of personal and national identity and stylistic influences from Europe were tempered by a vigorous independence and sense of pragmatic functionalism.

The Kaufman gift, dramatically complementing the NGA’s fine holdings of European decorative arts (donated by the Widener family) and major Dutch paintings with equally important American works of art, offers visitors to the nation’s capital an unprecedented opportunity to view some of the finest furniture made by colonial and post-revolutionary American artisans.

The Kaufman Collection of American furniture includes more than 200 objects, many of which were featured in the 1986–1987 “American Furniture from the Kaufman Collection” Gallery exhibition and catalog. The addition of the Kaufman Collection significantly enhanced the NPG’s decorative arts holdings which, although the NGA doesn’t actively collect decorative arts, consists of some 515 objects, including European furniture; tapestries; enamels; ceramics from the 15th and 16th centuries; Medieval treasury objects; a fine selection of 18th-century French furniture; and a large group of Chinese porcelains ( primarily from the Qing Dynasty of the 17th to 19th centuries).

Furniture and decorative arts from the collection have been on loan or appeared in exhibitions at numerous museums throughout the United States such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts; the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Winterthur, Delaware; the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; and the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C..  A smaller selection of other decorative arts, including looking glasses, mirrors and clocks, were all in the 1986–1987 exhibition.

Among the items on display are:

  • A Boston dressing table with exotic japanned designs (1700–1730)
  • A chest-on-chest (1765–1790) with four sculptural carved shells and a history of ownership by Providence merchant John Brown
  • A monumental Philadelphia desk-and-bookcase (c. 1765) considered by many scholars to be one of the greatest examples of American case furniture
  • An ornately inlaid Federal sideboard (1793–1795) made by Williams and Deming, New York, for Oliver Wolcott, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
  • A tea table (1755–1765) with claw and ball feet and pierced talons attributed to John Townsend
  • A singular inlaid Pembroke table (1780–1800) that descended in the Pringle family of Charleston.
  • Numerous examples of seating furniture from distinguished sets, including two from the famous suite commissioned by Philadelphia merchant John Cadwalader and his wife Elizabeth Lloyd.
  • A pair of painted and gilded porcelain “Old Paris” vases (c. 1820) with portraits of Presidents  George Washington and John Adams
  • Four rare pieces of Bonnin and Morris porcelain (1770–1772), America’s first porcelain manufactory, made in Philadelphia
  • An Amelung glass tumbler with the American eagle, made for the inauguration of President George Washington in 1789.
  • Gloucester Sunset (1880), one the most dramatic of a series of watercolors done by the Winslow Homer of sailboats on Gloucester Harbor and  one of the artist’s most vibrant and luminous early watercolors.
  • Two major watercolors by Childe Hassam, including Portrait of the Artist’s Wife (Leaning on a Garden Wall) (1890).
  • More than 40 stunning watercolors of flowers, vegetables, and plants painted on vellum by French artist Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), a favorite of Empress Josephine
  • Important watercolors by Francis Augustus Silva, William Trost Richards, and others.
  • The celebrated River View (1645), a painting by Salomon van Ruysdael (1600/03–1670), one of the finest and most atmospheric of this Dutch master’s majestic river scenes.
  • A Pier in Dordrecht Harbor (early 1640s), a light-filled river scene by Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691)
  • An imposing landscape from the end of the 1640s by Jacob van Ruisdael (c. 1628/29–1682) that depicts a weathered brick bridge crossing an inland waterway near a large oak tree.
  • A fanciful view of Amsterdam by Jan van der Heyden
  • A representation of the marketplace in Haarlem by Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde (1638–1698).
  • A trompe l’oeil depiction of a letter rack (1703) by Evert Collier.
  • Bearded Man with a Beret (c. 1630), an expressive head study by Jan Lievens.

 

The Kaufman Collection, comprised of masterpieces from the major centers of furniture making (Boston, Salem, Newport, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Charleston), includes work from many renowned cabinetmaker such as Thomas Affleck, John Goddard, Benjamin Randolph, John and Thomas Seymour, and John Townsend.

Spanning the years from 1690 to 1830, furniture in the Kaufman Collection includes objects in the William and Mary, Queen Anne, Chippendale, and Neo-Classical styles. Most of the 35 paintings in the gift are Dutch, which greatly enhance the Gallery’s collection (particularly landscapes) in terms of quality and significance, plus some from the American and French traditions.

The exhibit was divided into four high-ceilinged areas in a roughly chronological manner, with stylistic and regional subsections.  At the entrance to the installation, from Sixth Street, is the first gallery which incorporated a variety of decorative arts.  It features a monumental Philadelphia Rococo desk and bookcase, flanked by two robustly carved chairs; two recently acquired early looking glasses hung over a marble-topped table; a rare japanned dressing table; plus some of the earliest and most dazzling pieces, which date from around 1700 to 1760.

The second room is a select grouping of furniture that draw attention to the diverse regional characteristics that had developed, by the third quarter of the eighteenth century, in the colonial centers. Featured is a vigorously carved Philadelphia high chest placed opposite an elegant Newport high chest, while the center of the room is dominated by an extraordinary Providence chest-on-chest.

Two projecting cases that display four exceedingly rare American porcelains, made at the American China Manufactory founded by Gousse Bonnin and George Anthony Morris of Philadelphia, divide the Rococo from the Federal alongside an early glass tumbler crafted by John Frederick Amelung (active 1784 to about 1795).  American portraits from the Gallery’s permanent collection hang throughout the space, including seven recently conserved paintings by Gilbert Stuart, seen with exceptional porcelains from the Kaufmans’ collection.

The Federal room is highlighted by a magnificently inlayed, 18th century New York mahogany sideboard made and labeled by cabinetmakers William Mills and Simeon Deming (active 1793–1798) and masterworks by renowned Boston furniture makers John and Thomas Seymour and Duncan Phyfe.

The fourth room, a striking finale to the installation, features Empire Style objects such as one of the finest specimen marble-top tables, installed on a faux-marble plinth in the center of the room. Ornately painted and archeologically inspired furniture, popular during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, is epitomized by the scrolled Grecian couch attributed to John and Hugh Finlay of Baltimore. Sixteen botanical watercolors by Pierre Joseph Redouté (1759–1840), contributing to the grandeur of this gallery, are double-hung on either side of a pair of exquisite New York girandole mirrors.

The Kaufman Collection – Masterpieces of American Furniture, 1700–1830: G/F West Building, National Gallery of Art Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Tel: 202-737-4215. Website: www.nga.gov.  Admission is free.

National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C., U.S.A.)

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National Gallery of Art – West Building

The National Gallery of Art (NGA), and its attached 2.5-hectare (6.1-acre) Sculpture Garden, is located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. The NGA’s permanent collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present.

Check out “National Gallery of Art – Sculpture Garden”

National Gallery of Art – East Building

The substantial core collection includes major works of art donated founding benefactors Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, Chester Dale and Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch. In total, the NGA has 271,000 sq. ft. of exhibition space.

Spider (Louise Bourgeois, 1996 – 1997) – Sculpture Garden

Here are some interesting trivia regarding this museum:

Check out “National Gallery of Art – Sculpture Garden” and “Museum of Modern Art”

This national art museum includes the original Neo-Classical West Building (designed by John Russell Pope), which is linked underground to the modern East Building (designed by I. M. Pei). Often, the Gallery presents temporary special exhibitions spanning the world and the history of art.

Check out “National Gallery of Art – West Building” and  “National Gallery of Art – East Building” 

Here is the historical timeline of the museum:

  • During World War I, Andrew W. Mellon, a Pittsburgh banker (and later Treasury Secretary from 1921 until 1932)  began gathering a private collection of old master paintings and sculptures.
  • During the late 1920s, Mellon decided to direct his collecting efforts towards the establishment of a new national gallery for the United States.
  • In 1930, partly for tax reasons, Mellon formed the A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, which was to be the legal owner of works intended for the gallery.
  • In 1930–1931, as part of the Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings, the Trust made its first major acquisition – 21 paintings from the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg including such masterpieces as Raphael‘s Alba Madonna, Titian‘s Venus with a Mirror, and Jan van Eyck‘s Annunciation.
  • In 1929 Mellon had initiated contact with Charles Greeley Abbot, the recently appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
  • In 1931, Mellon was appointed as a Commissioner of the Institution’s National Gallery of Art. When the director of the Gallery retired, Mellon asked Abbot not to appoint a successor, as he proposed to endow a new building with funds for expansion of the collections. However, Mellon’s trial for tax evasion, centering on the Trust and the Hermitage paintings, caused the plan to be modified.
  • In 1935, Mellon announced in The Washington Star, his intention to establish a new gallery for old masters, separate from the Smithsonian. When asked by Abbot, he explained that the project was in the hands of the Trust and that its decisions were partly dependent on “the attitude of the Government towards the gift.”
  • In January 1937, Mellon formally offered to create the new Gallery.
  • On March 24, 1937, Mellon’s birthday, a joint resolution of the United States Congress accepted the substantial art collection and funds for construction of the building (provided through the Trust), and approved the construction of a museum for the American people on the National Mall. The new gallery, effectively self-governing (not controlled by the Smithsonian Institution), took the old name “National Gallery of Art” while the Smithsonian’s gallery would be renamed the “National Collection of Fine Arts” (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum).
  • On May 23, 1999, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, the final addition to the complex, was completed and opened to the public.
  • In 2011, an extensive refurbishment and renovation of the French galleries were undertaken. In one weekend, as part of the celebration of the reopening of this wing, organist Alexander Frey performed 4 sold-out recitals of music of France in the French Gallery.
  • In 2013, the NGA purchased, from a private French collection Gerard van Honthorst‘s 1623 painting, 1.23 by 2.06-m. (4 by 6.8 ft.) The Concert, which had not been publicly viewed since 1795.

Ginevra de Benci – Obverse (1474-78), the only painting of Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas

The Italian Renaissance collection includes two panels from Duccio‘s Maesta, the tondo of the Adoration of the Magi by Fra Angelico and Filippo Lippi, a Botticelli work on the same subject, Giorgione‘s Allendale Nativity, Giovanni Bellini‘s The Feast of the Gods, Portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci (the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas) and groups of works by Titian and Raphael.

A Woman Holding a Pink (Rembrandt Van Rijn)

The collections include paintings by many European masters, including a version of Saint Martin and the Beggar, by El Greco, and works by Matthias Grünewald, Cranach the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Albrecht Dürer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Anton Kern, Francisco Goya, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and Eugène Delacroix, among others. There are also later works from the likes of Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, and Roy Lichtenstein.

The author with the Self Portrait Vincent Van Gogh (1889) in the background

The collection of sculpture and decorative arts includes such works as the Chalice of Abbot Suger of St-Denis and a collection of work by Auguste Rodin and Edgar Degas. Other highlights of the permanent collection include the second of the two original sets of Thomas Cole‘s series of paintings titled The Voyage of Life, (the first set is at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York) and the original version of Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley (two other versions are in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Detroit Institute of Arts).

Watson and the Shark (John Singlton Copley)

The National Gallery of Art’s print collection began with 400 prints donated by five collectors in 1941.  In 1942, Joseph E. Widener donated his entire collection of nearly 2,000 works and, in 1943, Lessing Rosenwald donated his collection of 8,000 old master and modern prints.  Between 1943 and 1979, Rosenwald donated almost 14,000 more works. In 2008, Dave and Reba White Williams donated their collection of more than 5,200 American prints.  Today, in addition to rare illustrated books, the collection comprises 75,000 prints including collections of works by Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, William Blake, Mary Cassatt, Edvard Munch, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Walkway to the West Building and Cascade Cafe

A walkway beneath 4th Street, called “the Concourse,” connects the two buildings.  In 2008, the Concourse was transformed into Multiverse, an artistic installation by American artist Leo Villareal. The largest and most complex light sculpture by Villareal, Multiverse featured approximately 41,000 computer-programmed LED nodes that run through channels along the entire 200-foot (61 m)-long space.

Multiverse (Leo Villareal)

The concourse also includes a large auditorium for lectures, films, and other educational programs, a smaller auditorium, expansive gallery space, a food court (Cascade Café), bookstore (Concourse Bookstore) and a gift shop (Children’s Shop). Cascade Café serves an ever-changing selection of soups, salads, specialty entrées, burgers, signature sandwiches, and fresh pastries and desserts in a food-court environment.

Cascade Cafe

National Gallery of Art: Constitution Ave. NW (between 3rd and 9th Streets), Washington, D.C..   Tel: (202) 737-4215.  Website: www.nga.gov. Open Mondays to Saturdays, 10 AM – 5 PM, and Sundays, 11 AM to 6 PM.  It is closed on December 25 and January 1. Admission is free.

How to Get There: The most convenient metro stops are Archives/Navy Memorial (Yellow and Green lines; 0.2 miles); Judiciary Square (Red line; 0.5 miles), and Smithsonian (Blue and Orange lines; 0.7 miles).

Smithsonian National Postal Museum (Washington D.C., USA)

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The Smithsonian National Postal Museum, a museum located opposite Union Station in DC’s NoMa neighborhood, was established on November 6, 1990 through a joint agreement between the United States Postal Service and the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithsonian National Postal Museum

Opened on July 30, 1993, it is located in the historic historic Beaux Arts-style City Post Office Building, a building that once served as the Main Post Office of Washington, D.C. from 1914 (when it was constructed) until 1986.

 

Museum entrance along 1st Street

The building, which also serves as the headquarters of the United States Department of Labor‘s Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as a data center for the United States Senate, was designed by the Graham and Burnham architectural firm (the same architectural firm as Union Station), which was led by Ernest Graham following the death of Daniel Burnham in 1912.

Museum lobby.  On the right are the four large video screens

Its historic lobby, restored in 1989, was designed to be active.  It includes a welcome center, and four large video screens with a series of vignettes.

Systems at Work Exhibit recreates the paths of letters, magazines, parcels, and other mail as they travel from sender to recipient over the last 200 years

The museum, honoring and celebrating America’s proud postal history, occupies 100,000 sq. ft. of the building with 35,000 sq. ft. devoted to exhibition space.

Statue of Benjamin Franklin, located in the foyer, done by Lithuanian-born artist William Zorach (ca. 1935)

The  museum’s award winning public spaces, shops and support facilities were designed by the Washington, D.C. firm of Florance Eichbaum Esocoff King Architects while the galleries and inaugural exhibitions were designed by Miles Fridberg Molinaroli, Inc. with Bowie Gridley Architects.

Binding the Nation – Post Secret: The Power of a Postcard (August 3, 2015 – January 1, 2018) – exhibits more than 500 artfully decorated postcards mailed anonymously from around the world

It displays a vast collection of stamps from the National Philatelic Collection, which features more than 5.9 million items (the Smithsonian’s second-largest collection after that of the National Museum of Natural History).  The museum has one of the largest and most significant philatelic and postal history collections in the world and one of the world’s most comprehensive library resources on philately and postal history.

Check out “National Museum of Natural History“

Trailblazing: 100 Years of Our National Parks (June 9, 2016 – March 3, 2019) exhibit chronicles intersections between mail and US national parks

It also houses a 6,000 sq. ft. research library (more than 40,000 books and archival documents), a gift shop, a separate stamp shop and many interactive displays about the history of the United States Postal Service and of mail service around the world.

Pony Express: Romance vs Reality examines fictional and actual stories from the history of the world’s best known mail carriers.

Replica of mud wagon that crisscrossed the western territories

It also has informative exhibits, for all ages, on the Pony Express, the use of railroads with the mail and the preserved remains of Owney (the first unofficial postal mascot).

Railway mail train. The Railway Mail Service revolutionized the way mail was processed by sorting mail aboard moving trains.

Interior of train car. Mail previously untouched in bags on train floors was processed as the train sped toward its destination.

An exhibit on direct marketing, called “What’s in the Mail for You,” produces a souvenir envelope with your name printed on it and a coupon for the gift shop.

The preserved remains of Owney, the first unofficial postal mascot, who died from a bullet wound on June 11, 1897. His harness is weighed down by a number of tags.

Bronze statue of Owney

Visitors here learn the fascinating evolution of how Americans have used the mail to communicate with each other and the world.

Mail-carrying stagecoach from 1851

Guests will take a walk through history and see how mail has been transported, in a variety of eye-catching displays, whether it be early automobiles on dirt roads, stagecoaches chugging across the country, prop-planes in the skies above, or being pulled by real horsepower.

Creating Your Own Stamp Design

Visitors will see the diversity of postage from around the globe and also discover the art of stamp making and design, as well as how to start their own collection.

William H. Gross Stamp Gallery

In 2005, the museum acquired John Lennon‘s childhood stamp collection and, on September 2009, the museum received a US$8 million gift from Pimco investment management firm founder William H. Gross  to help finance the expansion of the museum. Every two years, since 2002, the museum has presented the Smithsonian Philatelic Achievement Award.

The 12,000 sq. ft. William H. Gross Stamp Gallery, the largest of its kind dedicated to philately, was named in his honor and opened on September 22, 2013. It houses the first American stamps, from 1847, a piece of mail from the 1860 Pony Express with “recovered from a mail stolen by the Indians” written on the envelope, and the 1918 “Inverted Jenny” with its biplane printed upside down — the most famous U.S. stamp-printing error. 

The author (right) at the atrium

The Postal Museum’s atrium, sporting a 90 ft. high ceiling, has vital objects from the postal past hanging overhead such as 3 airmail planes –  a De Havilland DH-4 airmail plane No. 249; a Wiseman-Cooke airplane and the Stinson Reliant SR-10F.

Stinson Reliant SR-10F was used in 1939 to test a unique airmail service for communities that did not have landing fields.

De Havilland DH-4 airmail plane No. 249 was used in the early 1920s to carry mail primarily in the western U.S. Henry Boonstra crashed this aircraft into a snow covered mountain on December 15, 1922.

Wiseman-Cooke airplane. Fred Wiseman took off in his airplane on February 17, 1911, the first heavier-than air flight sanctioned by a U.S. post office

The room is also adorned with a stagecoach from 1851 and a 1932 Ford Model A postal truck. They can also browse through a 1920s-style post office.

Jandy (right) beside a 1931 Ford Model A postal truck

Among its permanent exhibitions are: “Binding the Nation” (opened July 30, 1993), “Systems at Work” (opened December 14, 2011), “Moving the Mail,” “Mail Call” (opened November 10, 2011), “Customers and Communities” (opened July 30, 1993) and “Pony Express: Romance vs. Reality” (opened April 3, 2010).

Modular post office was in operation in Dillsburg, Pennsylvania from 1913 to 1971. Prefabricated panels, produced by the Federal Equipment Company of New York, New York and Carlisle, Pennsylvania, included one with a designated “Money Order” window, another for “Registry” mail and a third for “General Delivery.” The post office door was marked “Postmaster” and “private.” A separate section offered brass drops for letters, papers and packages.

The 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta, dubbed “The World’s Most Famous Stamp,” is on display here through November 2017. 

The 1986 Long Life Vehicle (LLV), a white, boxy postal truck, marked a major change in how postal officials approached buying vehicles

Museum Shop

Smithsonian National Postal Museum: Postal Square Building, 2 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002. Tel: (202) 357-2700. Website: www.postalmuseum.si.edu. Open daily (except December 25), 10 AM – 5:30PM. As a Smithsonian museum, admission is free.The library is open to the public by appointment only.

How to Get There: take the Metro‘s Red Line to Union Station and use the Massachusetts Avenue exit.  The museum is across the street. The DC Circulator also connects the museum and Union Station to the National Mall. Street parking is available nearby and all-day paid parking can be had at Union Station (2,000 slots), located right next to the museum. The museum is accessible by wheelchair, with ramps at its 1st Street entrance and North Capitol Street entrance, via the U.S. Post Office.