American Art Museum

After my tour de force of the Portrait gallery, I went to the Cowgirl Creamery (http://www.cowgirlcreamery.com/) for sustenance before tackling the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum (http://americanart.si.edu/). Cowgirl Creamery quickly shot to the top of my list of happy places. I enjoyed my goat cheese and baguette in the covered Kogod Courtyard in the middle of the museum. The courtyard used to be an open sculpture garden, but when the building was renovated starting in 2000 was covered to allow year round use.

The MAA, as it sounds, exhibits works by American artists from all eras of American history. The collection as a whole is impressive, but I was particularly taken with the Reynolds Center Contemporary Art Collection. Taken is an understatement as I would happily have moved in to the top floor (I know, impractical with all the pets), but it is a beautiful space and I hated to leave the third floor and go back down to Mary Cassatt and the Peale brothers’ portraits.

Woman Eating by Duane Hanson

Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway

Facts from the NPG and AAM weekend:

• Artist Charles Wilson Peale named his sons Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphaelle, and Titian. Rembrandt and Raphaelle have pieces in the American Art Museum which are lovely. I suspect that Titian is still recovering from being beaten up on the playground.

Painting by Rembrandt Peale

• Wild Bill Hickok’s real name was not Bill, Buffalo Bill Cody’s was

• William T. Wiley (check out the website for images from his retrospective) is a new favorite of mine

• Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, was born to a life of privilege in Georgia. When an unhappy marriage overseas led her to search for something useful to do with her life, she founded the Scouts based on the Girl Guides in England to teach girls to be more self-reliant.

• Zachary Taylor was nicknamed “Old Rough and Ready” …this was mentioned at least 4 times in the museum and is now indelibly seared in my memory.

• Jesse James, despite what Bobby Brady might have thought, really was a bad guy. His life of crime began out of anger at his family’s losses to the Union Army in the civil war

• Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to congress, was elected in 1916, four years before the 19th amendment was passed giving women the right to vote.

• Rutherford B. Hayes (or probably Ms. Hayes) had kick-ass taste in presidential dinnerware…way cooler than the “variations on the eagle in gold and blue” that everyone else has chosen