Washington, D.C. certainly lives up to its nickname, "Capital of the Free World." Most of what makes Washington special -- government buildings, monuments, museums, memorials -- is free. All Americans pay for Washington's attractions through their taxes, of course. But, since you have to pay whether you see them or not, come on out and get your money's worth of art museums, more museums, and historic homes.
Artful Mall Museums
In its Italian Renaissance-style building surrounding a courtyard, the Freer Gallery of Art (tel. 202/633-4880; www.asia.si.edu), on the south side of the Mall, has the cool austerity of a monastery. The Freer has a split personality. Part of it goes for modern American art, or at least what was modern from the late 19th through early 20th centuries, when Charles Lang Freer collected it. The lion's share of the gallery, though, is devoted to Asian art acquired by and after Freer. There's more Asian art next door, down in the subterranean Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, whose first thousand pieces of Asian art were donated by physician/publisher Arthur M. Sackler. Sackler's underground neighbor, the National Museum of African Art, spotlights traditional and contemporary art from throughout the continent. Completing this art museum row, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden looks the way a modern art museum ought to look: like an impenetrable piece of modern art. A donut-shaped, stilted bunker with one horizontal slit of windows, it looks like headgear for one of Homer Simpson's colleagues at the nuclear power plant. Curving galleries display modern and contemporary heavies. The outdoor sculpture garden is fun, especially when snowfall decorates the statues.
The National Gallery of Art (tel. 202/737-4215; www.nga.gov), an independent affiliate of the Smithsonian, consists of two separate buildings that are known, rather artlessly, as the West Building and the East Building, and are connected by a subterranean passageway with an airport-style moving walkway. The three-block-wide West Building opened in 1941, the building and initial artworks donated by former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon. It is filled with European works from the 13th into the early 20th centuries and American art from the 18th into the 20th. Here you will find, among many others, Raphael, Rembrandt, El Greco, and the only da Vinci painting in the Western Hemisphere. The East Wing is modern -- in both architecture and collection. Financed by Mellon's children, Paul Mellon and Ailsa Mellon Bruce, the sharply angled structure was designed by famed architect I. M. Pei. You can see how one especially sharp corner near the entrance has been polished by the marveling touches of countless visitors. The collection focuses on 20th -- and now 21st -- century works, the most prominent being a giant Calder mobile in the central court.
Artless Mall Museums
The National Air and Space Museum (tel. 202/357-2700; www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy) has become one of the most popular museums in the world, and its new annex at Dulles International Airport is causing its visitor count to soar even higher. You can trace the entire history of human flight here, from the first manned flight in the Wright Brothers' 1903 Flyer to the latest space technology. Beat the inevitable crowds by arriving when the doors open in the morning. Immediately buy tickets for an IMAX movie or the Einstein Planetarium later in the day, and then tour the exhibits before the place fills up.
You may not be overly thrilled about petting a tarantula, picking up a giant hissing cockroach, or crawling through a mock termite mound, but your kids will put those among the highlights of visiting the National Museum of Natural History (tel. 202/633-1000; www.mnh.si.edu), which has, among many other things, a hands-on insect zoo. Other highlights for the whole family: the African elephant in the main floor Rotunda; the 45.52-carat Hope Diamond in the Hall of Geology Gems and Minerals; and exhibits about humans, under the theory that we're part of natural history, too.
While you're on the Mall, you might as well stroll down to the U.S. Botanic Garden (tel. 202/225-8333; www.usbg.gov), where the Mall bumps into the base of Capitol Hill. In addition to the 4,000 plants on display inside the nation's greenhouse, there are outdoor gardens adjacent to the building and across Independence Avenue where you can see a fountain created by Frederic August Bartholdi, the French designer of the Statue of Liberty. Poinsettias bring lots of color to the greenhouse during Christmas season, and it's a nice warm place to duck out of the cold throughout the winter.
Artful Converted Mansions
Built between 1799 and 1801, the Octagon Museum (tel. 202/638-3221; www.archfoundation.org/octagon) downtown actually has six sides, plus a rounded entrance hall that may have spawned the name. Round rooms in the 18th century often were formed from eight angled walls that were plastered smooth in a circle and were referred to as "octagon salons." This is among the facts you can learn touring the house, which the American Architectural Foundation employs as a museum. Serious history has happened within these -- whatever number -- walls. After the British burned the White House in 1814, it was the temporary residence for President James Madison and his wife, Dolley. The next year, the Treaty of Ghent, which ended that war with Great Britain, was signed here. During World War II, the CIA predecessor OSS was headquartered here, as was the National Trust for Historic Preservation after that war.
Across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, the Renwick Gallery (tel. 202/633-2850; www.americanart.si.edu/renwick)displays American crafts in an 1859 Second Empire mansion designed by noted architect James Renwick, Jr., to house the art collection of William Wilson Corcoran. What was Washington's first art museum later moved down the street and became the Corcoran Gallery, which features American and European art and has the distinction of being Washington's largest private art museum. Renwick also designed the Smithsonian's Castle. The Renwick Gallery is part of the Smithsonian's American Art Museum. American Art's main building at Gallery Place, closed for extensive renovations, is scheduled to reopen in mid-2006.
Opened in 1921, the Phillips Collection (tel. 202/387-2151; www.phillipscollection.org) sprang from the private collection of Jones & Laughlin Steel Company scion Duncan Phillips, whose 1890s Georgian Revival mansion near Dupont Circle feels less like a museum than a gallery in an elegant private home. The Phillips calls itself America's first museum of modern art, but Duncan Phillips also collected the works of earlier artists who influenced the moderns. He acquired an El Greco from around 1600, for example, because Philips considered the painter to be the "first impassioned expressionist." During a large remodeling/expansion project (the fad among D.C. art museums), the Phillips sent some of its European masterpieces on tour. They're to return by the fall of 2005.
Marjorie Merriweather Post, heir to the Post Toasties fortune, purchased a Georgian mansion in Upper Northwest in 1955, renamed it Hillwood, and had it enlarged to display her art collection. Now known as Hillwood Museum and Gardens (tel. 202/686-5807; www.hillwoodmuseum.org), this mansion and grounds overlooking Rock Creek Park are open for tours by reservation. Of Post's four husbands, number three was Joseph E. Davies, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, and that marriage turned her on to the Russian art that would become her passion (instead of, apparently, Davies). A bracing Royalist antidote to all that democracy on the Mall, Hillwood displays an extensive collection of Russian decorative art, including Faberge eggs, as well treasures from France and elsewhere.
The stunning Kreeger Museum (tel. 202/338-3552; www.kreegermuseum.org) -- in another affluent Upper Northwest neighborhood, this one just north of Georgetown -- was built in 1967 for Geico Insurance Co. founder David Lloyd Kreeger and his wife Carmen. The building -- modern with influences from Byzantium, Egypt, and Rome -- was designed to be residence, museum, and concert space. It was opened the public in 1994, displaying primarily works acquired by the Kreegers. The collection ranges from the mid-19th century to the 1970s and includes works by Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Picasso, Munch, Miró, Calder, and Washington Color School artists, as well as some traditional art from Africa and the Americas.
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