Dipping into the D.C. area

Exhibits

The Textile Museum is one of my favorite museums: interesting exhibits, great gift shop, and a nice sculpture/azalea garden out back overlooking parts of the Dupont Circle area. "The Kimono Inspiration: Art and Art-To-Wear in America" is probably the best exhibit I've seen there so far. I was smitten by one kimono (more on this later) even more than any of the "Landscape Kimonos" exhibited at the Museum of Natural History (below), and I loved those. I had never heard of this little museum (2320 S Street NW, near Dupont Circle Metro) until I saw a poster about the exhibition, but it's a pretty cool little place. The exhibit had traditional and contemporary kimonos, as well as a few paintings and commercial advertisements of people wearing kimonos over time. Some kimonos were funny; some were mysterious; some were lovely. Most of them looked kind of stiff exhibit-wise, though I suppose it was best to display them in that T-fashion for preservation. I was really glad to see some with pictures alongside (to show how they look on human bodies). The one that blew me away was "Koi Kimono" by Tim Harding. It's made with little scraps of fabric. As you look at the kimono, you see ripples in water. Just under the ripples, you can see red-gold koi lazily swimming. They really do appear to be in motion, probably due to the looser scraps of fabric that almost flutter. I spent about ten minutes just on this piece, walking around and viewing it from every possible angle. Sadly, this piece is not in the exhibit book put out by the museum. There was also an interesting video documentary of kimono artist Katherine Westphal explaining the evolution of some of her pieces.
I also like their 20th-century "art" quilts exhibit with neat work in perspectives, and one beautiful one where trees in grass bordered the outside, and the main part was a bunch of falling leaves, each one of which had a different scene, of fish, shells, people, animals, and other bits of nature, but the first impression before you look closely is just a beautiful green-purple-coral abstract. I got my favorite deck of cards here: 52 quilts, one for each card. Each one takes its card's number or suit (or both) as its theme. One of the heart cards, for instance, depicted a Aztec sacrifice (with a heart!).

Corcoran Gallery: Saw a Dale Chihuly exhibit, Seaforms. Chihuly is an artist who works in glass. The huge "seashell" groups were beautiful, glowing eerily under the lights, with patterns refracted through them onto the walls. Some were jagged oyster-like clusterings, whereas others were smooth and curving, with tiny shells clustered inside. Most of them lost some of their effect upon close approach, sort of like impressionist paintings. They also had an interesting video, showing Chihuly and cohorts glassblowing, molding, sculpting, and otherwise shaping the glass for an exhibit a few years ago.

Natural History Musuem (Smithsonian, on the Mall): There's a good cafeteria in this building, if not as neat as the underground one in the National Gallery (the one with a nice sort of waterfall, between the East and West buildings). In addition, their new IMAX theater here shows nature flicks like big elephants on the march and so on. I saw a beautiful exhibit here, "Landscape Kimonos" by a modern Japanese textile artist who's reinvented (with a few modern touches) a 400-year-old art of dying, texturing and painting silk to create beautiful works of art in the form of kimonos. Some of his pieces were standalone (some abstract, several representational of Mount Fuji), but there was one wonderful 30-piece exhibit that, as you slowly walked among them, showed a mountain range changing from fall to winter.

Freer/Sackler Museums (Smithsonian, on the Mall, connected underground): I've seen several interesting exhibits here. Also, the permanent collection of beautiful Japanese ceramics on the lowest floor includes a riveting piece I've returned to again and again, a white bowl with faintly blue-glazed grooves that swirled and opened out to space.

S. Dillon Ripley Center (International Gallery): This is a little round building with a gallery underneath and paths into the lower levels of the Freer/Sackler. As with the Freer and Sackler, part of the joy of this space is the architecture before you even get to the exhibits themselves. Beautiful materials, the use of light, geometrical bays leading nowhere contrasted with trick-the-eye murals. The coolest exhibit I've seen here was on Lalique's jewelry.

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