Art Day!

Got up early and headed toward the National Mall. My chief interest was visiting the National Museum of African Art; I think it was one of my favorite places so far! I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to bring my students there; I took tons of photos and published them in a separate album on my Facebook page. The NMAA leads into the Freer Gallery of Art/Asian and American Art; from there I went to the Arthur Sackler Gallery (Asian art). I decided to visit Smithsonian Castle - interesting historically, with little exhibits from some of the other Smithsonian museums. I strolled around in the various gardens (and there are a lot of them) for awhile, then made my way to the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (I had previously visited the sculpture garden, but not the museum itself). It was... interesting. It's a contemporary and modern art museum, and I guess I'm just more of a traditionalist! I amused myself trying to guess what some of the art represented before reading the placards - I was wrong about 99% of the time! It was neat to see some familiar pieces/artists, though; there were a couple of pieces by Andy Warhol and an small exhibit on the works of Alexander Calder (he has some pretty cool mobiles). Some of the "art" was quite puzzling to me; there was one piece that was just a bright green shape (nothing I could discern in my limited knowledge of geometry) and a canvas that was painted blue. Just a blue square of canvas stuck up on the wall. There was also a room about bodies; there was a foot sticking out of the wall and a GIANT naked chubby man sitting in the corner. I guess I just don't "get" modern/contemporary art! There are still several Smithsonian museums I have left to visit: National Portrait Gallery (American Art Museum), American History, American Indian (which I've heard has one of the best, most unique places to eat on the Mall), and a couple of others. Good thing I don't start at NASA for another 20 days!

Addendum (8:45 PM): Dee - last year's NASA fellow - invited me over for supper tonight. She and her husband bought different flavors of ravioli from Eastern Market; they were astonishing! I'm not a big dessert person, but they had chocolate ravioli (cocoa powder in the "pasta" and stuffed with chocolate/ricotta cheese mix) and I LOVED it! Such a nice way to end an already very pleasant day!