American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery

Our trip to the American Art Museum involved much of the game, “Choose Which Piece in This Gallery You Want for Your Home.” The art was beautiful and thought-provoking! Luckily for us, the Smithsonian American Art Museum had sprinkled little notices all over the walls for its visitors: “Photography encouraged.” Talia and I snapped away! We were most excited to see Nam June Paik’s “Electronic Superhighway,” which we had studied in Art History class earlier this year. The neon-bright installation, which features fifty-one T.V. monitors that form the shape of the United States. Paik pulled on stereotypes of each state when choosing which program to put on repeat, and he reminds us that individual states still retain differences and charactar even in today’s technological age. Talia and I were so excited to see Electronic Superhighway that we spent fifteen minutes trying to stage the perfect Tom Cruise Risky-Business-esque reenactment in front of the piece.

Next we headed over to the National Portrait Gallery (conveniantly in the same building!) and spent a lot of our time there repeating the dreaded whisper, “I recognize his face but can’t remember his name!” JK! We saw everyone from Queen Elizabeth I of England, to Brigham Young, to Michelle Obama. We also had a ball walking through the Presidents’ Gallery and waiting in line to see Barack Obama’s new portrait. What a strawberry jam-packed day!

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Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

We took our friend Charlotte with us to the Hirshorn for a short, sweet trip down on the Mall.  It’s always a nice addition to a day.  Doesn’t take long to walk through, and you always feel ~illuminated~ after leaving.  While the architecture and gardens outside are a marvel of themselves, the real mind-bender is the art inside.  The basement contains some floor to ceiling art, as well as some really interesting multimedia videos that focus around “New Media” – music, communication, and video – and the role it plays in 21st century society.  Some real deep stuff.  What is really cool about the Hirshorn is that these contemporary artists have a say in how their art is curated and displayed, and the exhibitions, not just the art itself, are a form of artistic expression in themselves.  It’s worth a trip!! And make sure to check out the Dolcezza gelato for a yummy snack on a hot day…

 

Renwick Gallery

The Renwick is dope.  Nothing else to say.

LOL

Just kidding.  The Renwick has really hit the nail on the head with its past few exhibits.  “Wonder” basically made social media history with thousands of instagram and facebook posts of the incredible colors and installations in the main hall.  The Renwick has “done it again” with “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.”  It was truly incredible to learn about the history of this epic desert festival and see the artifacts that inspired the installations in the museum.  With multimedia displays, our words and pictures cannot do justice to how cool the exhibition is.  They are all really interactive and mind-blowing, not to mention how much they will pimp out your VSCO feed!

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Don’t walk, RUN down to the Renwick, what LBJ called the country’s “gallery of arts, craft and design.”

BTW, #NoSpectators has set up 6 outdoor sculptures downtown…go see if you can find them! They reside in the triangle formed by Penn Ave and K St.

American Indian Museum

After a long morning at the Air and Space Museum, we headed to the American Indian Museum right next door. Our stomachs were growling, so we went straight to the to the Mitsitam Cafe, located on the ground level of the museum. “Mitsitam,” which means “Let’s Eat!” in the Native language of the Delaware and Piscataway peoples, has been voted best Smithsonian Museum restaurant and features indigenous cuisines found in five regions of the Americas: the Great Plains, Mesoamerica, the Northern Woodlands, the Northwest Coast, and South America. After surveying all of our options, Talia and I opted for tlayudas, and we were not disappointed! Native to Mesoamerica, tlayuda consists of a large, thin, partially toasted tortilla covered with a spread of refried beans, a type of meat (usually pork), and then toppings of your choice, such as: lettuce, avocado, cheese, and salsa. Nom nom nom…

We were sad to see that many of the museum’s other visitors had settled for a more typical American fare: a grilled chicken sandwich or a burger.

Air and Space Museum

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We are back! After a brief hiatus from blog writing, we have resumed this SUPER FUN work in order to let you all know what we have been doing! What seems like weeks and weeks ago, we visited the Air and Space Museum down on the Mall.  We had both been to this museum many times, many years ago, as children, and we were greeted by exactly that as we entered the huge building on Independence Ave.  LOTS and LOTS of kids….having fun!  The museum does a great job of engaging all types of people – sciencey people, artsy people, touristy people, and kiddies!

Some memorable exhibits are “How Things Fly” sponsored by Boeing, Pioneers of Flight, and Artist Soldiers.  “How Things Fly” seems directly to have come out of our childhood, with interactive stations demonstrating gravity, lift, and how airplanes work.  While I didn’t really understand all the text or information, it was still fun to do the little science experiments and all the parents in the room seemed relieved to have a break from wrangling their kiddos.  Pioneers of Flight was a cool timeline of the history of famous flights, going all the way back to a model of the first ever hot air balloon, which was developed by the Montgolfier brothers and sponsored by Marie Antoinette in 1783 Paris! (guess who wrote this post ;-)) The exhibit also included one of Amelia Earhart’s planes!  My favorite exhibit in the museum was actually one developed in conjunction with the American History Museum, “Artist Soldiers.”  All about artistic expression in WWI, it correlated perfectly with Ms. Salata’s “War and Lit” class!

Of course, a visit to the Air and Space Museum is not complete without going into one of the simulators! We opted to do the one of the interactive flight simulators, and Erica COMPLETELY FAILED at piloting our plane.  I think we would have crashed if the software didn’t prevent that…but it was super fun!

If you wanna go relive your childhood experiences, go check out the Air and Space Museum! Go on the weekday if possible to avoid massive lines and huge crowds of kids.

Holocaust Museum

This past Saturday, we embarked on our first museum visit.  We grabbed our friend Gabby and drove downtown to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  While not a member of the Smithsonian Institute, the Holocaust Museum is also free of charge and has a permanent place near the National Mall.  For an early morning, the museum seemed very crowded with school groups, couples, and families. We lined up for the main exhibit, where every visitor is encouraged to take an “Identification Card.”  Each card tells a different story of a real person who lived during the Holocaust. These cards are a part of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center’s effort to keep the stories of these victims, both Jewish and not-Jewish, alive.  With our cards in hand, we shuffled into a large elevator to head up to the top floor.

The museum consists of a permanent exhibit that starts on the third floor and spirals down. The first images visitors see when the elevators open on the top floor is a black and white photograph of American soldiers discovering a concentration camp, with all the horrors it contains, for the first time.  The exhibit moves in chronological order, beginning with the rise of Fascism in Europe and the Nazi Party. The transitory space between each floor offers a reprieve from the dark and heavy content of the exhibit. These spaces are much brighter and more spacious, providing seating under colorful modern art.

With its dim lighting, cold temperature, and factory-inspired architecture, the exhibit purposefully makes visitors physically uncomfortable.  As we walked through the exhibit, we understood that those around us were also experiencing this similar discomfort. This feeling adds to the idea that people facing persecution everywhere go through similar experiences, although they are all unique. While most of the information and images are in plain sight, the museum takes care to shield visitors from some of the more disturbing videos. One particular example of this is tall walls blocking perhaps younger visitors from watching a video about medical experiments performed on inmates in the concentration camps.  

At the end of the permanent exhibit, there is a special exhibition sponsored by the museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide on Syria. It was really interesting to see a contemporary related issue displayed in a historical museum. While the Holocaust is a very heavy issue, we think that the museum does a good job of educating people on the event and giving voices to those affected by genocide.

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.” – Elie Wiesel.

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Erica

Greetings loved ones, let’s take a journey…. to the Mall (and I don’t mean the shopping mall)! My name is Erica Robison, and I’m a senior at Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland – a short drive away from our nation’s Capital. I could not be more excited for Talia and my trips over the next four weeks to both museums that I have never been to before, and museums that have always held a special place in my heart. I’m so glad that we are able to share our experiences with you, so please tune in!

 

Me “soaring and flying” at the Air and Space Museum!

Talia

Hi all!  Welcome to our blog!  My name is Talia Bartley, and like Erica, I’m so excited to share our senior project with all of you! I have loved history for as long as I can remember, and taking art history this year (shoutout Ms. Gajendragadkar!) has really piqued my interest in museums and art.  I’m really looking forward to visiting museums I’ve gone to for my whole life with a fresh perspective.  Please follow along as we explore DC and beyond!

Me pretending to know what I’m talking about in the Pop Art section of the National Gallery

Welcome to our blog!

Hi!  We are starting “Meet Us at the Museum” as a way to compile our research and thoughts in the upcoming month.  With a mission of learning more about the history and role of museums in American society, we plan to visit nearly all of the Smithsonian museums in in Washington D.C. and then spend a weekend visiting a handful of museums in New York City. We look forward to learning about the process of funding, designing, and curating exhibits from our visits to the museums and from meeting with professional archivists. In the last two weeks of the month, we will apply what we have learned to create our own timeline of Holton-Arms School history.