DC: Museum of American Indian, National Building Museum, and Hirshorn

We also spent part of a day each at the Museum of the American Indian and the National Building Museum.

The Museum of the American Indian is a fascinating piece of architecture. Its exterior evokes cliff dwellings carved into tan sandstone, while the interior hints at native dwellings on a massive scale. The exhibits are designed by historians from specific traditions across the Americas - from the Chile to the Arctic - and rotate between traditions on a regular basis. It's interesting and useful to hear from participants about their own traditions, but I did wish for a unifying narrative that put each of these traditions in a larger historical, environmental, and cultural context. How were ideas shared between regions and traditions? How did the languages develop? What are the prehistoric roots of the Native American tradition?

Actually, one cultural high point for us was the cafeteria, which offers a sampling of foods from six different native regions, well prepared and often verging on the exotic. Expect lines, it's very popular and it takes time to navigate all the choices. We ended up returning at a later date just for lunch at 11:00 am to avoid the crowds, and the lines were long by 11:30.

Another fascinating building was the National Building Museum. Formerly the Civil War veteran's pension office, its space is now devoted to architecture and building. There were extensive educational studios in support of school field trips, an exhibit of huge scale models of great world architecture built of Legos, and an exhibit covering a famous Art Deco muralist and mosaicist Hildreth Meiere. But the greatest pleasure was simple experiencing the towering interior space, the massive faux-marble columns, and the high galleries surrounding the atrium while families congregated below and children tumbled on the carpet in the exuberance of the exotic space. The building itself was the best exhibit. Very cool.

Finally we spent part of a day at the Hirshhorn museum of modern art. This is also an interesting building, formed as hollow cylinder, the outside virtually windowless, the inside extensively windowed above an open courtyard. Modern architecture I generally like, modern are is more a 50/50 proposition for me, but I truly enjoyed most of the exhibits here, especially the sculpture. Of special interest was the Calder exhibit. I have seen many Calder mobiles throughout my life in many public spaces, and they had begun to look the same, but his smaller works seemed to display a greater range of creativity, and having them hung in  featureless rooms lit with spots to accentuate their shadows and motion was a revelation. The biggest surprise was his caricatures in wire. How he was able to fashion recognizable faces in three dimensions with simple single pieces of bent wire is a tribute to his artistic genius. I can still hardly imagine seeing so clearly and simply in 3D and then being able to suggest such sold three dimensional space with a one dimensional material such as wire.