Birds and Buildings | Washington, DC Part 3

Here are some photos from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Like all other Smithsonian institutions, it is free and requires security checks. Because I don't want to drag out the DC posts any longer, I've also included photos of various federal buildings.

Commercial aircraft

Looking out over the Udvar-Hazy Center. WWII aircraft in the foreground, commercial civilian aircraft in the background. Note: Japanese planes (rising sun on the wings and tail), the Enola Gay (huge R), Air France Concorde jet

The Air and Space Museum is split into the museum on the National Mall in DC and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in a giant hangar in Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia. The combined museum houses the world's largest collection of air and spacecraft, and is the second-most visited museum in the world (first is the Louvre and third is the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History). The main museum is horribly crowded in the summer, but Udvar-Hazy is comfortably populated. I spent perhaps four hours between the two, but could have spent at least that much in each facility.

Learning about the Space Race. Note an unlaunched Skylab, Hubble Space Telescope, Apollo 11 command module Columbia, and a V2 rocket

Vought F4U-1D Corsair, Pacific theater of WWII

Contrary to what these photos may suggest, there are non-American aircraft and non-military aircraft. German and Japanese planes were in abundance, including a Messerschmitt Bf 109, a very powerful and feared Luftwaffe fighter.

Curtiss P-40 Warhawk with shark nose art "Lope's Hope", WWII American fighter

A German Pfalz D.XII supposedly used during WWI...that eventually appeared in Hollywood movies about WWI. Part of the Red Baron exhibit

Here's a personal aside about this museum. When I was a young child, this museum floored me. I went through a phase of aircraft mania that prompted me to apply as an mechanical or aerospace engineering major to half the colleges I applied to. I watched a lot of History Channel programs about aircraft, was briefly obsessed with a mythic future career of designing top secret military stealth birds X years ahead of the most advanced civilian aircraft.

Boeing X-45A, an unmanned combat air vehicle, stealthy

All this was ignited by this museum. I doubt we went to the Udvar-Hazy Center, but perhaps the very spark was a little model of the SR-71A Blackbird on display at that very hangar that my parents bought for me. It was lost somewhere in between moves, but for several years, it sat on my desk and kept me company (it was also a pencil sharpener). I miss it so, and tried to find that same souvenir when I visited this time (among the cornucopia of Blackbird-themed mass-produced merchandise, no luck...the one truly functional souvenir). My sibling got a non-pencil sharpener model of the Space Shuttle Discovery.

Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in all her glory

Space Shuttle Discovery surrounded by other spacecraft

And, I would be irresponsible in forgetting to warn about the throngs and throngs and throngs of middle school and younger kids packed into the museum on the National Mall. It's almost impossible to stand still and read a plaque intently, the aircraft and additional artifacts speak for themselves.

Amelia Earhart's Lockheed Vega 5B

I also needed to remind myself that certainly, one grand purpose of this museum is to inspire the children of America to want to learn more about aircraft, to be curious about engineering and history, and to help them see their own futures in those very exhibits. Another thing: the free guided tours are wonderful. My tour guide was a retired engineer and history buff and a great educator; tour guide at Udvar-Hazy was similarly engaging and informative. As annoyed as I wanted to be at the crowds of children, I had to remind myself that this museum really was made for them.

Wright 1903 Flyer, the first heavier-than-air powered aircraft

I'll continue this sermon and stick the logistics in at the end. This museum is my favorite museum in the world (and to spoil, I prefer the Udvar-Hazy Center over the main museum). It was incredibly easy to get carried away with AMERICA FUCK YEAH-type patriotism looking at all the military aircraft, reading about and watching footage of American pwnage in basically all the wars in the past century. Especially at the Udvar-Hazy Center, which is mostly military aircraft, it was very easy to fill up with nationalistic excitement.

Space Shuttle Discovery

In the museum and the hangar in Virginia, the planes are just planes in a museum. Even with little info plaques, they're decontextualized engineering marvels, and maybe just an abstract representation of American domination and heroism. But, I do think that this is a personal distinction to make, and that the mostly neutral presentation of the exhibits of the Smithsonian museums in general are appropriate. I just need constant reminder of geopolitical context to prevent crazy mythologizing of the USA.

I show Enola Gay here, but there were flocks and flocks of Cold War planes from Korea to Vietnam, and an even larger flock of helicopters used in the Gulf War, Afghanistan, etc, etc that I didn't take pictures of. There's a kind of unsubstantiated (but possibly very true) Reddit claim that the first, second, and third largest air forces of the world are the USAF, the US Navy, and the US Army. It's a huge source of patriotism and national pride, but, again, decontextualizing and mythologizing.

Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber "Enola Gay", dropped atomic bomb "Little Boy" onto Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 and participated as weather recon in the bombing of Nagasaki three days later

I've neglected to mention the space stuff, but a lot of that went right by me. I don't have much to say other than to appreciate the vast collection of space artifacts and space craft, particularly the Space Shuttle Discovery, which is simply breathtaking. Another note is that many of the objects I took pictures of are models or versions of a craft that never entered orbit. Much of what is sent into space is not returned, and the objects that do come back are in fairly bad condition.

Soviet capsule, Soviet capsule, American capsule

Cosmonaut and astronaut

At long last, here are my opinions on going to the Udvar-Hazy Center 26 miles away from the National Mall. If you have any interest in aircraft, spacecraft, or twentieth century war, the Udvar-Hazy site is a mandatory destination. It took me about 1.5 hours to reach the Washington-Dulles International Airport from the Smithsonian on the National Mall at around 12:30 PM, though the return trip was twice that amount due to rush hour traffic. By car, it should not take more than an hour, but I've realized that 35 miles on the highway means something different in northern California than northern Virginia. The Metro is easy to navigate, and the Fairfax Connector bus service to the hangar and the international airport are regular and reliable, but horribly vulnerable to bad traffic. Because I wanted to return to Washington by 7 PM, I only stayed about 1.5 hours at Udvar-Hazy, when I could have easily spent 3 or 4 there. If you have time in your itinerary, this can absolutely be a day trip. If you are taking public transportation, I recommend leaving DC in the morning and returning in the early afternoon to avoid gridlock.

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And finally, here are the photos of various federal buildings. No comment other than about the intense security everywhere...and the tour groups everywhere. All the glorious interiors are from the Library of Congress.

United States Capitol

Left: Library of Congress

Right: Supreme Court

Left: Athena

Right: an eagle

The White House

National Gallery of Art | Washington, DC part 2

So, this post is heavy on the images and light on the words. I love art, but I guess I'm a bit basic in what art I really admire. I'm no good at art criticism in any capacity, but I have a lot of thoughts on my favorite art movements.

Green River Cliffs, Wyoming - Thomas Moran - 1881

Let's just get this out of the way: the Hudson River School is my opinion of ultimate landscape art. I occasionally paint -- I copy existing paintings onto wood board with acrylics, that is -- and I always go back to Hudson River School paintings. I edit my own crappy iPhone landscape photos to look more HRS and follow the spiritual successors of that great American art movement on Instagram.

El Rio de Luz - Frederic Edwin Church - 1877

The Hudson River School was late-19th century art movement rooted in Romanticism-inspired landscape, begun in the Hudson River Valley of New York state. It spread to New England, the American West, and was essentially the aesthetic ancestor of much art and imagery produced of the American wilderness thereafter.

Tamaca Palms - Frederic Edwin Church - 1854

Not all of the art in this post is HRS by any means, but I've tried to front-load them so you can get a sense of the style. It's not subtle at all. It's brash and bold and makes me -- figuratively speaking -- want to start a USA! USA! chant in the middle of a museum.

Buffalo Trail: the Impending Storm - Albert Bierstadt - 1869

Wikiart is another good place to look at more HRS art, and you'll quickly find that some of the works depict places in the world of not-America. That's okay, that's okay.

Niagara - Frederic Edwin Church - 1857

Here is my opinion on the significance of the Hudson River School. I wrote a short essay about it for a class last fall, but I have forgotten the sources and will just summarize briefly here. In the early "modern" era -- post-Enlightenment -- western society became disenchanted with nature, a previously vital and powerful, unpredictable and dangerous place where gods did their work. The march towards a worldview of controlling nature came on the heels of many Greek philosophers, the Abrahamic religions, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment. In the mid-late 1800s, there was a surge of art and literature -- Emerson and Thoreau are the obvious answers -- to reclaim enchantment with nature.

The Last of the Buffalo - Albert Bierstadt - 1888

The grandeur of nature conveyed by Romantic art, the turbo-charged grandeur of American nature conveyed by the HRS, is a reintroduction of God into nature, but in an anthropocentric, and even egocentric way. It's a glorification of the magnificence of the "untouched" wilderness, the drama of God in the clouds/intense sunlight/mountains/forests/high-contrast vivid colors/etc. If you're cringing, you can think of it as another example of ham-fisted American imperialism. These paintings were, after all, used as propaganda for westward movement and vacationing.

Mount Corcoran - Albert Bierstadt - 1877

That's all I'll say about HRS. To get the same feel of the American wild via text, I recommend John Muir.

The National Gallery of Art has a great collection of these paintings, and I do love them.

Natural Arch at Capri - William Stanley Haseltine - 1871

Ruins of the Parthenon - Sanford Robinson Gifford - 1880

The Voyage of Life - Thomas Cole - 1842

Thomas Cole was a founder of the HRS, and his work is pretty much amazing all around. Romanticism galore and allegories here and there. Analyses of his landscape works will tell a lot about that movement, certainly better than I can here.

Left: Portrait of George Washington - Rembrandt Peale - 1795-1823

Right: Washington before Yorktown - Rembrandt Peale - 1824

Indian Gallery - George Catlin

Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon - John Martin - 1860

Left: The Japanese Footbridge - Claude Monet - 1899

Right: an atrium in the National Gallery

The Edge of the Forest at Les Monts-Girard, Fontainebleau - Narcisse Diaz de la Peña - 1868

Left: Madonna and Child with Angels - Orcagna and Jacopo di Cione - before 1370

Right: The Adoration of the Magi - Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi - c. 1440/1460

Left: Ginevra de' Benci, obverse - Leonardo da Vinci - c. 1474/1478

Right: its reverse

Landscape with the Flight into Egypt - Roelandt Savery - 1624

Saint George and the Dragon - Sodoma - 1518

As a prelude to my Germany posts, I really like dragon and serpent imagery. Just a warning for many dragon pictures to come.

Left: Flowers in a Basket and a Vase - Jan Brueghel the Elder - 1615

Right: Still Life with Artichokes and a Parrot - Italian 17th century

Left: Still Life with Flowers and Fruit - Jan van Huysum - 1715

Right: The Larder - Antonio Maria Vassallo - c. 1650/1660

Left: The Hydrogen Man - Leonard Baskin - 1954

Right: Booster - Robert Rauschenberg - 1967

Riders of the Apocalypse - Benton Murdoch Spruance - 1943

Just to show that I'm not entirely about glory, glory, Hallelujah USA, this is one of my clear favorites from the museum. I feel a little silly, but it gives a very Guernica-like feeling, but with the aggressors being American planes (check out the stars on the fuselage).

Anyhow, the next post is very aircraft-heavy. I like planes.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History | Washington, DC part 1

Welcome to the first of my three-part recap of my trip to Washington. It's an image-heavy post with very little accompanying, relevant info to the specific images, which I do apologize for. Really, consider this a post as my thoughts on visiting DC in general accompanied by photos from the nation's treasure chest/cabinet of curiosities/attic. Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian Institute serves that purpose, and as a vehicle for research in science, history, art, "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge."

Also, a DC trip to see the landmarks, memorials, federal buildings, and National Mall (where most of the museums are clustered) is extremely obvious and unoriginal. It's an itinerary that is extremely popular among middle school tour groups, which flood the capital in the summertime. I have tried my damnedest to keep the throngs of youths out of these pictures, but just know that the museums are large, crowded, and loud.

The Natural History and American History museums are most susceptible to this, but do quiet down considerably in the afternoon. I visited DC when I was in fourth grade, and it's hard to communicate the overwhelming sense of wonder at everything contained in the museums, all the information and things to look at. I distinctly remember going through the Natural History museum with my mother for hours, getting lost among the exhibits and frantically tearing through the exhibit halls when the museum was closing. I've only really taken pictures of taxidermy and minerals, but the museum contains extensive exhibits about astronomy, geology, the oceans, mammalian evolution, human origins, insects, etc, etc.

I go as far to say that this museum did more to inspire me towards science at that age than any book I read, or lesson I had in school. While there certainly are many thorough placards to read and a lot of information to digest, this is a very kid-friendly place. Be careful not to step on any of them.

A whale hunt and the Lord of Three Realms

I went to DC with my mother, who was there for a conference and only had time to see this museum. We stayed around 2 hours before she had to go, after which I went to the American History museum. No pictures from there because it was even more packed, and very poorly lit. This museum is for everyone, and the most accessible form of American history is American Exceptionalism. Keep a critical view of American history, how we have affected international economics and geopolitics especially since WWII, and enjoy the exhibits. There is plenty to see even if the lighting is not good, and the vast exhibition halls on transportation (a dealership of ye olde automobiles, trains, etc) and the history of electricity (a hardware store of ye olde appliances, transformers, generators, batteries, etc) are not to be missed. The "food in America" room is also very interesting.

The "Price of Freedom: America at War" exhibit is pretty exhaustive in terms of information and artifacts, but extremely cramped and crowded and dark. It's a huge portion of the museum and I recommend seeing it in the afternoon when crowds are smaller.

I stopped by some other museums, but my favorite on the National Mall is the Natural History museum. Here are some samples of displays in the metals and minerals hall. There are dozens of these cases, and hundreds of samples to marvel at. Out of all the topic areas in this museum, the mining and metals section is the richest in information and things to look at.

I've tried to group these photos based on mineral type. These are both elbaite.

I decided to try out DC's Capital Bikeshare system on this trip, and it worked out reasonably well. Because I haven't been on a bike since high school, it was more challenging for me to get accustomed to riding with traffic (very busy) and searching for bike stations. DC is very flat, but streets are very wide and sometimes bike stations are empty. In any case, biking is far more comfortable than walking in DC, which is hotter, sunnier, and more humid than I'm used to.

Celestite, a chief source of Strontium in the world

IIRC, these are all sulfate-based rocks

Fluorite of all shapes, colors, and sizes. The funky cubes come from uneven degradation of the crystal, whose basic unit cell is an isometric cube. This means that the crystal grows in cubes and decays in cubes. Use some Wikipedia-fu to learn more about crystal structure.

More fluorite.

An assortment of blue crystals.

Arkansas quartz

I am certain you can find pictures of this most impressive quartz with some people standing in front of it. It's about five feet tall, I believe.

Lots of opals

Monster opal

This large piece of amethyst quartz is free to touch

Left: Hall sapphire necklace, platinum, with 195 carats of sapphires and 84 carats of diamonds

Right: Logan sapphire, 423 carats

Left: Post emerald necklace, Art Deco Cartier

Right: the Hope diamond, 45.52 carats

Look here for more info on mineral and gem specimens at the Natural History museum.

I'm trying to space out my picture-heavy posts from Washington and Germany, but really, I need some time to write about everything I saw and learned in Germany. My Germany posts will mostly go in chronological order, but there is room for non-linearity. Because I use this blog as a way to thoroughly document things that I witness/think about/etc, there will be lots of museums, history, and politics because those are things that interest me.