Washington, DC 6/12/14

We spent the majority of the day at the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Andy Warhol, photographed in 1979 by Yousuf Karsh.

Julia Ward Howe, author of lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic and prominent in the women’s suffrage movement of the 1800s.  Painting by John Elliot, 1925.

Photograph of Abraham Lincoln, 1861.

Photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln, 1861, by Matthew Brady.

Photograph of the Smithsonian Castle, 1863, attributed to Matthew Brady.

Sketch of the Lincolns, 1864, by Pierre Morand.

Washington became a major hospital center for wounded soldiers during the Civil War.  Photograph of a mess hall in one of the hospitals.

Travel in and out of Washington was severely restricted for civilians and military during the Civil War.  Below is a photo of one of the many checkpoints in and around the city. 

The pass below was granted to two young boys to cross into Washington to skate and play.  The back of the pass contains the oath of allegiance to the United States required of anyone issued a pass.



Detail of a painting of Big Elk, 1832, by George Catlin.

Painting of Benjamin Lay, 1750, by William Williams.  Lay, a Quaker reformer, was a central figure in the emerging antislavery movement prior to the Revolutionary War.  The portrait was commissioned by Benjamin Franklin, whose printing press had published one of Lay's most savage abolitionist tracts.

An Iroquois clay pot from the 1500s.  The League of the Iroquois played an important role in the 150-year rivalry between French and English settlers beginning in the early 1600s; at times serving as military allies, and at other times resisting the expansion of those settlers.

An Iroquois war club made of chestnut, c 1750.

The shaft of the club contains two carvings, one showing the club in use.

A painting of Walt Whitman by John White Alexander, 1889.  Whitman thought the painting portrayed him as too genteel.

A bronze bust of Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 1887.

Sunday Morning, oil, by Thomas Waterman Wood, 1877.

A Steinway piano commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 for the White House.  The painting, by Thomas Wilmer Dewing, on the inside of the lid represents America as the new steward of Western culture.

Tiffany glass, c 1900.  The iridescence in these pieces was achieved by blending molten material in various colors, then exposing the vessels to chemical fumes.

The Library, tempera on fiberboard, 1960, by Jacob Lawrence.

Riding Down the Buffalo, bronze, A. Phimister Procter, 1916.

A terra-cotta bust of Albert Einstein, 1934, by Jo Davidson.  In 1935, Davidson, who had formed a friendship with Einstein, sent Einstein a check to assist persecuted Jews in Europe.  In the 1950s during the height of the McCarthy-era repression, Einstein wrote of the death of Davidson in 1952, "His passing will be keenly felt as an impoverishment of public life in this time of distrust towards all non-conformists."

Terra-cotta bust of the financier and philanthropist Andrew Mellon, c 1935, by Jo Davidson.

Photograph of a young Muhammad Ali, c 1960.

We also visited Ford's Theatre, site of Lincoln's assassination.

 

Lincoln was seated in the chair on the right when he was shot.  The framed portrait of George Washington in the center of the balcony is the original painting and frame used that evening to denote the Presidential Box.

The actual derringer used by John Wilkes Booth to shoot Lincoln.

The Petersen house, directly across from Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was carried and died the following morning.