National Gallery

Like Rodney Dangerfield, the National Gallery don't get no respect. It often gets overshadowed by its brother museums. Painting, sculpture, and photography lack the whiz-bang fun delivered by, say, the Air and Space Museum. There, you can press buttons and flip toggles with abandon. At the National Gallery, if you lean a few inches too close to a Degas or Renoir, an overzealous security guard will scream at you. Where's the fun in that?

But visitors don't come to the National Gallery for the fun. They come to see the artwork, and there the National Gallery delivers. I spent two hours wandering through the West Building--it houses "classical" art, which is to say, art where you can still tell what the heck is going on. I enjoyed one hour and fifty-seven minutes of the experience. The three unpleasant minutes came when I was stalked by a rather unpleasant guard, but no matter.

For a starter, I sampled the German masters. Though Germany has a reputation for bloated bombast, these paintings were small, even humble. Many were simple ink sketches on plain paper. Of course, the masters did live down to some German stereotypes. All the artworks depicted either 1) the German people or 2) the German landscape. The exhibit included a few paintings from Caspar David Friedrich, whom I admire for his wild romantic style and his hilarious sideburns. Both his paintings involved a faint moon rising above some desolate Teutonic locale. Strangely, they reminded me a bit of the "Spaceman Spiff" episodes from Calvin and Hobbes. Some highbrow I am.

Then came a stroll through the nineteenth-century gallery. Here the paintings were bigger, bolder, more colorful. Lots of portraits of Victorian ladies and Victorian dandies; there were probably some instances where I mistook the one for the other. Unfortunately, I did not have time to take in one of my all-time favorite paintings, John Singleton Copley's "Watson and the Shark." Ever seen it? If not, hasten yourself to Wikipedia. It makes Jaws look like Finding Nemo.

My culture vulturing ended in a special exhibit of Allen Ginsberg. In addition to his beatniking duties, Ginsberg was also a pretty good photographer. Every shot was in black-and-white; strange in this day of digital cameras, but not unpleasant. A few particularly lovely photos depicted the view from Ginsberg's apartment window. One look at them, and you feel a sudden desire to move to New York City. My one complaint with this exhibit: a very unexpected full-frontal shot of Allen Ginsberg's little Buddha, if you catch my drift.

I tried to go to the modern art wing but got bogged down at the museum cafe. So I had a chicken sandwich and later recreated the artwork I missed by pouring laundry detergent onto my dorm floor.

Those two hours in the Gallery were good ones. The National Gallery is a broccoli museum--not delicious, but good for you and enriching for your intellect.