Grand Opening

After our lunch in Chinatown, Edward, Ryan, and I went to the grand opening of the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which reopened yesterday after an extensive renovation and fund raising campaign which has had the museum closed since the Clinton Administration.

The building is very nice. Everything has fresh coats of paint, polished floors, retiled floors and walls, releaded stained glass, and repaired roof leaks and wall cracks. This structure was originally built in 1836 to serve as headquarters for the U.S. Patent Office. Because of the grand spaces and open areas on the third floor of the building, it has been used for all manner of social events, including President Lincoln's second inaugural ball.



In the renovation, the contractors discovered a lot of the original decor of the building, including tile floors and some stained glass skylights. All of those things have been incorporated into the new remodel of the grand Greek Revival building.

Opening day was a festive occasion. They were giving away ice cream and popsicles on the steps and the Target Corporation, one of the museum's major donors, was giving away fans, tote bags, and little stuffed dogs. Dozens of volunteers dressed in period costumes from throughout the nation's history wandered the hallways, including this "Marilyn Monroe," who was near the gallery where we found one of Andy Warhol's Marilyn paintings.



It's been decades since I've been to the Portrait Gallery, so I can't remember exactly what was what. It seemed to me, though, that a lot of the same layout and floor plan was used for the new museum, just gussied up a bit, especially in the portrait section. The two museums split the building in half, so as the viewer wanders through each of the four floors, half will be American art and half will be portraits.

Now that this museum has reopened, I'm going to have to make the rounds of all the other Smithsonian museums to figure out where stuff is these days. It kind of appears as though the new museum has cannibalized a lot of the other museums, pulling in not only portraits, but famous art pieces which were prominently featured elsewhere and even a number of historic objects such as books, swords, clothing, textiles, and even mechanical fragments.

Pictured at the left are fragments from the spy plane flown by Gary Powers that crashed in the former Soviet Union in 1960, precipitating the "U-2 Crisis." It's an interesting bit of history, but it's neither a portrait nor a piece of "American art," so I don't know why it's here.

In addition, all the George Catlin paintings of Plains Indians in the early 1800s, which were the anchor of the Renwick Gallery, now appear scattered out all over the new Portrait Gallery.

We ran into the Target Dog on the second floor, so Edward and Ryan had to have their picture taken with him. We also ran into a sculpture of three bears, which Edward has (albeit a much smaller size) at his home.

I've a few more interesting pictures from the galleries which I will put up in separate posts.