Capital Culture

The Mall in Washington DC is home to what must be the greatest concentration of national museums in the world.  The National Gallery of Art sits alongside some of the 19 Smithsonian museums of, to name a few, Natural History, the American Indian, Air and Space, the Portrait Gallery, the forthcoming Museum of African American and Culture... the list goes on.  It’s quite an intimidating prospect, and the Museum of African Art and the Freer Gallery – both small by comparison with their vast neighbours – were for me the most memorable.  The former brought lots of ideas for my work through discussions with the staff about their programmes and innovative exhibitions, such as the African Cosmos where the Museum collaborated with the Astrophysics arm of the Smithsonian.   

The Freer, another museum with its origin in an individual’s collection, contains an exceptionally beautiful Asian collection as well as the installation of the Peacock Room decorated by Whistler in London and brought to America by Charles Freer in 1904. The walls are painted in a rich dark green-ish blue adorned with gold peacocks, while on the ceiling, feather patterns emanate from the light fittings.  Specially-designed shelves of wood and bamboo hold bowls of muted-coloured ceramics from the collection – the intense atmosphere with low lighting is quite intoxicating.  

I also rather liked this ‘squeeze’ of a cuneiform 

inscription from Persepolis made by a German archaeologist in the early 1930s.   This technique uses a form of papier mache to preserve script found at ancient sites, creating a 3D low-relief mirror image of the original. In the text, King Darius prays to the Zoroastrian god Ahuramazda to assert power and protection over his subjects.  The bleak greyness and arctic temperatures outside made the Sargent painting below of an Italian loggia a welcome and evocative reminder of warmer climes.  

With thriving Downton-mania over here, British characteristics, including the inability to ask for things efficiently (an American ‘give me..’ – which is not perceived as remotely rude – compared with my stuttering ‘if I might I possibly trouble you for ...’), and my accent are continuing to provide much amusement and I fear I'm becoming a bit of a parody of a batty Merchant Ivory lady traveller.  An attempt to buy ‘gas’ for the car in a small-town had all the trappings of a dire transatlantic-fish-out-of-water movie – requiring assistance from several members of staff and a kindly homeless man to complete the task successfully..!