National Portrait Gallery

I started to look through the National Portrait Gallery a week ago. I had gone to the Elvis exhibit thinking that I would check out the rest of the museum when I was done, but was overwhelmed by the size of the museum and ended up leaving after a few minutes of Elvis and another few admiring the ginormous portrait of LL Cool J that graces the first floor entry hall.


I went back this weekend with new resolve to see not only the NPG, but also the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The museums, housed in the same building, collectively are called the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture. To add to the confusion, the AAM is technically housed in both this building and in the Renwick Gallery. Whatever…I covered this bad boy from top to bottom this weekend. Both museums, three floors plus courtyard and mezzanine, 6 hours of art (with a little break for cheese).

The NPG is located in the original government Patent Building, a beautiful Greek revival building at 8th and F streets downtown. After the White House and the Capitol, it was the third public building constructed in Washington. Construction began in 1836 and wasn’t completed until 1868, although the Patent Office used the finished wings starting in 1840. In addition to serving at the Patent Office until 1932, the building was the site of President Lincoln’s second inaugural ball, barracks during the Civil War, and, beginning in 1968, opened in its current iteration. Hard to believe walking through the gorgeous grand hall on the third floor that in 1953 it was slated for demolition to become a parking lot.

The Great Hall

                                                                         

The Portrait Gallery is unique in that it focuses more on the subject than the artist. There are substantial notes with almost every item in the museum giving the history of the subject in question. This amounts to a guided tour through American History….fascinating, but requiring mental stamina.

 

The permanent collection is substantial with artifacts from early North American life and portraits of notable Americans.  They do an admirable job of including all Americans in the mix...Native Americans, settlers, slaves, men, women...they try to cover all aspects of American history.

Iroquois Club and Wampum Belt

 Edith Wharton by Edward Harrison May

The America’s Presidents permanent exhibition is pretty fantastic. Portraits, sound clips and statues of all of the American Presidents including the iconic painting of Washington. My favorite part of the collection was that Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were (almost) elected sequentially. Damn Warren G. Harding for getting in the way of some good alliteration.

Landsdowne Portrait of George Washington

by Gilbert Stuart

 

The Bravo! Exhibit showcasing artists and performers is interesting too. The ONE thing that I skipped is the Champions exhibit. I looked at a portrait of Babe Ruth (that was for you Mark).

One final note on the permanent collection.  The prize for the strangest name EVER goes to....Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer....not kidding, that's his name.  Do you think that explains the look on his face?

There are a few current exhibits in addition to the permanent collection that are well worth trip.  Check them out online to see pictures http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/current.html

Ceiling Detail of the Great Hall

• Portraiture Now: Communities looks at three communities through the eyes of the artists who painted them. One artist, Rose Frantzen, painted 180 small, photo-like portraits of people in her small town of Maquoketa, IA. These were done quickly in one sitting to capture each person at a given moment. The larger, looser paintings done by Rebecca Westcott are more intimate, showing some subjects repeatedly or with friends. You feel as if you’ve stepped into a dinner party of the artist’s friends at her New York apartment. Jim Torok (also featured in the Portrait Competition on display) paints small scale, but painstakingly done portraits working from personal knowledge of his subjects and myriad photos to convey what the person is really like not just what they look like. The styles of the artists are very different so the paintings give you a sense of the community, but also of the artist him/herself. This one runs through July 5.

• Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2009 offers an eclectic mix of portraits done in all different media. Artists from around the country submitted their interpretation of their subject ranging from realistic to abstract. The competition itself is over (see the website for the winner), but is on display through August 22, 2010.

• One life: Echoes of Elvis. One room…the King deserved more. Running through August 22, 2010.