Sunday, August 24, 2008

Saturday

Back to the archives by 9:30 am (I only had about 6 more boxes to go through). I found some amazing material (that I should have realized was there, but did NOT expect) and which will be really useful for all kinds of purposes—talks, teaching and writing, etc. I photocopied some it (or rather TH did) and I made photographs of some of it. Of course, later that night (after the archive was CLOSED), we realized we had left the 16 most interesting copies in the photocopier. SO, I’ll have to write for that or I’ll have them recopy it and mail it. By 10:45 we were on our way to NMAI, where we spent about 4 hours (could have stayed a lot longer, of course).

From there, we went to the National Gallery of Art (another 2 hours), then to the SPY Museum (not Smithsonian affiliated—let’s be clear) and on to the National Portrait Gallery after that. Talk about museum fatigue—that was about 7 hours of non-stop museum-going, but we loved every minute of it. I took better photos than the one below, but I have to post this one for CP.

3 comments:

one art said...

Awwww! It's Henrietta with her dwarf! How adorable. (He was jokingly called "Lord Minimus" and a hapless ambassador once mistook him for one of her children. Hee.)

Thanks!

(I hope y'all wore comfy shoes.)

auto ethnographer said...

what do you know about the monkey?

one art said...

I'm mesmerized by the building, btw - I clicked on that photo and just stared at it for a while.

I gotta get me to DC.

Oh, the monkey. Um, well, if I recall correctly, the interpretation is that the monkey and the dwarf are competitors (and hostile ones) for the favor/attention of Herself. And that Van Dyck (it is VD, innit?) wanted the viewer to see that both were considered toys of the court. Sad really.