Travel 3: The wonders of Washington DC – the Museums and Art Galleries (v1.0)

 In a previous essay I talked about the wonders of Washington DC from the point of view of a capital city and from the point of view of memorials, and monuments tied to American History. In this essay I will focus on the museums and art galleries that are outstanding in the city. Most of them are in or near the National Mall.

The Smithsonian Institution Building houses the Smithsonian Institution’s administrative offices and information center. The building is constructed of Seneca red sandstone in the Norman Revival style and is nicknamed the Castle. It was completed in 1855. It was architected by James Renwick Jr. Around 1900, the wooden floor of the Great Hall was replaced with terrazzo and a Children's Museum was installed near the south entrance. The visitor center has interactive displays and maps. Computers electronically answer most frequent questions.

The Holocaust Museum is a memorial to the Holocaust. The holocaust was one of the worst tragedies the world has ever seen with millions of Jews killed. Its purpose is to educate its visitors on the dangers of hatred and the atrocities of genocide, and how society can confront challenges to freedom and human dignity. The centerpiece of the Museum is its permanent exhibition, simply titled the Holocaust with artifacts, photographs and film to provide a chronological telling of the tragedy.

The National Museum of American History collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is the original Star-Spangled banner. The museum opened in 1964. The renowned architectural firm McKim Mead & White designed it.  

The National Museum of Natural History is the eleventh most visited museum in the world and the most visited natural history museum in the world. It opened in 1910. The museum's collections contain over 145 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts – the largest natural history collection in the world.

The National Museum of American Indian opened in 2004. It is a living memorial to Native Americans and their traditions.

The National Air and Space Museum was established in 1946. It is the fifth most visited museum in the world and the second most visited museum in the United States. It is a center for research into the history and science of aviation and spaceflight as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. The museum contains the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, the Friendship 7 capsule which was flown by John Glenn, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis, the Bell X-1 which broke the sound barrier, the model of the starship Enterprise used in the science fiction television show Star Trek, and the Wright brothers Wright flyer airplane near the entrance.

The Hirschhorn Museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H Hirschhorn. Architect Gordon Bunshaft designed it. It currently focuses its collection-building and exhibition-planning mainly on the post-World War II period, with particular emphasis on art made during the last 50 years.

The National Museum of African Art includes 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes. The museum was founded in 1964. The collection focused on traditional African art and an educational mission to teach Black cultural heritage. 

The historic National Portrait Gallery was founded in 1962 and opened in 1968. Its collections focus on images of famous Americans. 

The National Gallery of Art and sculpture garden was privately established in 1937 for the American people. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder. For the breadth, scope, and magnitude of its collections, the National Gallery is widely considered to be one of the greatest galleries in the US. It was ranked fifth on the list of most visited art museums in the world

The Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art together focuses on Asian art. The two galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country and contain art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, the ancient Near east and ancient Egypt as well as significant collection of American Art.

The Arts and Industry Building was built to provide the Smithsonian with its first proper facility for public display of its growing collections. The building, designed by architects Adolph Cluss and Paul Schulze, opened in 1881. The Arts and Industries Building was closed for some time and reopened in November 2021 for its first exhibition since 2004, Futures, scheduled to run through July 2022. Afterward, the building is scheduled to be closed for significant renovations, which would allow it to be permanently reopened as early as 2028. The building is being evaluated as a possible home for the National Museum of the American Latino or the Smithsonian American Woman’s History Museum.

There is no other city I know of with such a wonderful collection of superb Museums and Galleries. Even if you are not an American History buff or interested in American Government, just these Museums and Galleries are a compelling reason to visit.