I’m working my way through my posts about our trip to Washington, D.C. I did a sum-up of nearly everything we did and another post about the great food that we had, one political cartoon exhibit , so this time I want to highlight the art that we saw and experienced.
I had been to the National Gallery of Art before but never the east building. This trip I saw both and what a treat that was! My first visit was our second day in town. We had just had a little lunch at the Pavilion Cafe then walked through the sculpture garden en route to the 7th Street entrance of the west building. As I said in previous posts, the heat was just awful so we ducked into the west building on our way to the east building to avoid said heat. I had read there was a path between the two buildings. We just followed the signs and voila! A darkly painted tunnel with lights everywhere made us feel like we were on a ride at Disneyland.
We made it all the way to the east building in that nice, cool air conditioning. The museum is unique due to its airy and bright atrium in the center. There are pieces of art along the outer walls as well as hanging from the ceiling in the atrium. It’s quite calming walking around and visiting the art galleries. We saw Picasso, Braque, Stieglitz, O’Keeffe and Matisse, to name a handful. We saw others too but I’m not remembering them now. At the end we happened upon a piece that contained a mirror so I had hubby stand in front of it while I took that photo.
This first gallery shows some sculptures in the Sculpture Garden and some of my favorites from the East Building:
We visited the National Portrait Gallery with my sister and nephew. Even after living in the area for a couple of years and my many trips to visit my sister and mother, I had never been to the Portrait Gallery. When I saw photos and read about the Obamas’ portraits, I knew I had to see them in person so I included this museum on my list of “must sees”. It definitely exceeded my expectations! The Portrait Gallery has four floors but we only had time for the second and third floors. We also went to the gift shop on the first floor because you have to visit the gift shop! Okay **I** have to visit gift shops.
The presidential portraits are on the second floor so we started there. The portraits are laid out in numerical order in an open floor plan and you weave your way around to see them all. There were other paintings beyond this area but since we had lunch reservations and I wanted to see Michelle Obama’s portrait, we headed up to the third floor where her portrait resides. There are many other galleries on both the second and third floors that we didn’t have time to see so I’m hoping to back again.
I am not sure what the theme is or how the artworks on the third floor are chosen, but it was yet another display of fascinating portraits of many important people in American history. This next gallery contains artworks that I was particularly fond of in the Portrait Gallery.
My last group of photos contains most of my favorites from the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. I have visited this museum many times and it’s one of my favorite art museums. I never tire of going there to view all my favorites. This time I went by myself as it was our last day in D.C. and hubby wanted to see the Library of Congress. So we split up and I took my time both viewing the paintings and sculptures that I like as well as spending time in the extensive gift shop. I think this gift shop might be my favorite museum gift shop. There are so many things to look at!
But first a little story of when I first entered the building. I stopped at the information desk to get a map so that I could find all of my favorites. A nice woman greeted me and asked if I needed help finding anything. When I said no, she made the most interesting comment: “you have of course been to the east building.” This stunned me since I had only just visited the east building a few days ago so I asked her how she knew that. “You just look like the type of person who visits the east building.” So I told her how I was intent on seeing the east building on this trip and that I just went there for the first time and absolutely loved it. She agreed and we had a lovely encounter.
On to the last gallery for this post: some of my favorites from the West Building of the National Gallery of Art.
travels with toby 
Thanks for sharing your pictures Toby!
thanks for looking!
Toby, thanks for the tour. I love the cartoonist’s work. These other artists are not bad either. 😎
Thanks for looking! Glad you enjoyed it.