Marla and I were amazingly fortunate to spend four full days exploring Washington DC museums with our grandson and dinners with friends. Paxton enjoys museums as much as we do so it was a major treat for all. The famous cherry blossoms had peaked but there were a few colorful remnants near the Tidal Basin.

Linda and her husband David invited us for dinner in their beautiful apartment. Linda and I have been good friends since high school. The wines, cuisine, and and especially the chatter… were A+ as always! The portraits on the wall are two of Linda’s relatives from the 18th century.

A little Champagne to start the evening.

We always enjoy being with Linda and David.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was a supremely emotional and educational immersive experience.

“As a living memorial to the victims of the holocaust, the museum aims to inspire leaders and citizens worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.”

“Jews were the primary victims – six million were murdered; Roma, people with disabilities, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including gay men, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.”

One cannot dismiss the sobering parallels between the burning of books in Nazi Germany…and today, with books being taken out of libraries and schools in Florida and other Southern States. I am supremely worried about today’s rising tide of antisemitism, homophobia, and Islamophobia…but hopeful that good people can open their hearts to an enlightened sense of tolerance and understanding.

The “Tower of Faces” is a three-floor-high segment of the permanent exhibition at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum devoted to the Jewish community of the Lithuanian town of Eisiskes, which was massacred by units of the German Einsatzgruppe and their Lithuanian auxiliaries in two days of mass shootings on September 25 and 26, 1941.

The museum is a painful reminder that we can never forget the horrors of the past…or today.

After lunch at the Holocaust Museum we walked on The Mall to the National Gallery Of Art. Their collection consists of more than 150,000 paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, photographs, prints, and drawings spanning the history of Western art and showcases triumphs of human creativity.

We walked through the National Gallery Of Art Sculpture Garden. The orange colored Calder stabile was very dramatic.

Paxton admires “Little Dancer Age Fourteen” by Edgar Degas 1878 – 1881.

I have loved Art Deco and Art Nouveau sculptures for years. This is “Diana” by American sculptor, Paul Manship in 1925. He is probably most famous for “Prometheus” (1934), a fountain sculpture at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Paul Manship’s “Dancer and Gazelles”, created in 1917.

“The Veiled Nun”, attributed to Giuseppe Croff, is a marble bust depicting a female figure that was sculpted by an unidentified Italian workshop in c. 1863. Despite its name, the woman depicted is not a nun. The bust was popular with visitors to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. from 1874 until the museum closed in 2014. 

Contemplation.

This is the 1739 salon from the Château de la Norville with carved ‘boiseries’ (term used to define ornate and intricately carved wood paneling) and its series of humorous decorative “Singerie” paintings” by Christophe Huet. It was purchased in 1922 Dr. Alexander Hamilton Rice [1875-1956] and his wife, Eleanor Elkins Widener Rice [1861-1937] for the dining room of their Fifth Avenue mansion in New York City.

This is the captivating 1862 painting, “The White Girl”, by James McNeill Whistler.

The beautiful bronze,“Isoult”, 1926, by Edward McCartan

A courtyard of the museum.

The rotunda of the National Gallery Of Art with the dramatic Mercury figure are stunning. The columns remind me of the The Hermitage Museum which I visited years ago when the city was called Leningrad.

We all were mesmerized by this monumental Albert Bierstadt painting, “Among The Sierra Nevada.” The painting was a bequest of Helen Huntington Hull, granddaughter of William Brown Dinsmore, who acquired the painting in 1873 for “The Locusts,” the family estate in Dutchess County, New York.

Renoir’s, “The Dancer”, 1874.

The Edgar Degas 1899 painting “Four Dancers” has always enchanted me. If you are ever in Paris, I recommend visiting the fascinating “Cimetière de Montmartre” where Degas is buried.

Paul Gauguin’s 1889 self-portrait is enigmatic and mysterious.

Paul Gauguin’s, “Fatata te Miti” (By the Sea) from 1892. These paintings came from the Chester Dale Collection.

I particularly like this bold Van Gogh self-portrait of 1889, one of 36 he painted.

Paxton and Marla discussing “Bazille and Camille (Study for ‘Dejeuner sur l’Herbe‘) by Claude Monet in 1865.

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec painted “Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in Chilperic” in 1895-1896.

Orientalist paintings of the 19th century hold a fascination for me with their vibrant exoticism. When viewed with today’s lens they point out a colonialist past many wish never happened. Click on this link for more on this topic: https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/art-photography/real-or-imagined-representing-the-orient/

“Woman With A Parasol – Madame Monet And Her Son.” Claude Monet 1875.

Next week I’ll present my last installment on Washington DC museums with a slightly different perspective.

Photos: Dick Gentry. Not to be used without permission.