american art and portraits

I decided that with my Sunday I would visit the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Portrait Gallery, which are housed in the same building. I metroed over to Chinatown and had lunch at 5 Guys burgers – a place Amy had called an east coast version of In N Out. The ingredients were fresh and the food was relatively well made, but really, no one comes close to an In N Out burger.

After my lunch, I walked over to the Museum. The setup is a bit weird, since literally half of the building is American Art and the other half is Portraits – rather than having one floor of each. But it offered a bit more variety as I wandered out of one and into the other. I found that, for the portrait gallery, I really appreciated the photographs the best. I know that a painting of Lincoln is just as old as a photograph of him, but something about seeing history captured in a photograph is really cool to me – it almost seems more real to me to see in a photo. The portrait gallery also has an exhibition of portraits of celebrities and athletes throughout history that I particularly enjoyed. The American Art half of the museum was interesting, too. There was an awesome exhibit on Hip Hop music, with incredible painted portraits of some of the most celebrated Hip Hop artists. There were a few murals that were so beautiful, and there were some excellent black and white photos of Hip Hop artists on stage – very artistic. I was really disappointed because the O’Keefe and Adams exhibits were both closed for renovation. I was looking forward to seeing some more of O’Keefe’s work (there were a few pieces in the National Gallery), but I was most excited to see the Adams photographs in their collection, and was totally bummed. :(