Museuming Around DC: A Summer of Artful Adventures

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One of my favorite things about DC was the access to an abundance of free museums. The past couples years, I haven’t had very many museum going opportunities. Covid was a contributing factor. There is a museum in Roanoke, the closest city to Blacksburg that I have yet to go to, but other than that there are some small galleries around. Prior to going to DC for the summer, I made it my goal to go to a different museum every weekend. Overall, I’d say I was pretty successful. I spent the summer museuming around DC and visited a different museum almost every weekend. There were three weekends when I didn’t, one when I went home for my grandma’s birthday, a weekend in which I had covid, and a weekend when my friend visited. 

Here’s are the Museums/galleries I visited:

• Hirshhorn museum 
• Museum of Asian Art 
• Museum of African Art 
• Dumbarton House 
• National Museum of African American History and Culture 
• National Portrait Gallery 
• Ford’s Theater 
• National Museum of the American Indian 
• Planet Word Museum
• The Building Museum 
• National Gallery-West Building for Afro-Atlantic Histories 
• The National Zoo (I know it’s not a museum, but it’s genre related)
• Gadsby’s Tavern in Old Town Alexandria 
• National Gallery-East Building 

I really wanted to go to the Air and Space Museum, but it was closed for renovation/restoration. It reopens on October 14th. If I had more time, I would have liked to go to the Natural History museum, but the other museums took precedent. I have to leave something to do when I go back.

My favorite museum 

My favorite museum was the National Gallery East Building. It was my favorite for two reasons, the architecture and the content. The museum houses the modern and contemporary art collections. For me, this is the art I’m more interested in seeing. Additionally, the building was designed by I.M Pei, the architect who did the Louvre Pyramids. Its unique geometry and massive atrium that connects the exhibition spaces creates a sense of exploration and surprise as you go through it. The atrium is so massive it seems as if it takes up the entire building. It’s a wonder there’s any room for exhibition spaces. 

My Least Favorite Museum

My least favorite museum was the Building Museum. I didn’t have this museum on my radar until someone at work suggested it. I was pretty disappointed by it. It was the only museum on the list that I had to pay for, which probably influenced my expectations. It is a museum of “architecture, design, engineering, construction and urban planning.” But the exhibitions were lacking and seemed to be poorly maintained. The best part of the museum was the visitor center/where you get your tickets. They have this wall of architectural curiosities beautifully displayed and in the adjacent room, an architectural material study. The most noteworthy aspect of the museum is its central atrium with massive 70ft marble columns. In the past, they’ve had some pretty cool installations, like a giant ball pit or a sea of icebergs. However, when I went they had it set up for a play and surrounded the columns with a blue cloth, completely blocking the view of the columns and from being able to see through the length of the building. It was such a disappointment. 

The most surprising museum

For this there’s actually two: The Dumbarton House and the National Museum of the American Indian. The Dumbarton House was not a place I had any intention of seeing and didn’t even know it existed, but I was with someone in Georgetown who suggested going to it. It was completed around 1800 and is a federal period historic house museum. It boasts a surprising number of antiquities, but the real surprise was the Pre-Columbia gallery; a modern addition of 9 rooms of curved glass walls on a 3×3 square grid with the middle as a courtyard. It’s makes you feel a oneness with nature as if you’re walking amongst it. I found out afterward that it was designed by Phillip Johnson, one of the most famous architects of the 20th century who designed the Seagram Building in NYC, the Glass House in Connecticut and the New York State Pavilion or the “flying saucers” at the end of Men in Black. 

The National Museum of the American Indian was great because I didn’t know what to expect and I learned a lot. Architecturally, the building stands out from others on the National Mall, but the museum is more than just what’s on the inside. Surrounding is a landscape filled with plants indigenous to the Native Americans extending the museum’s presence to the outside.