At the Hopper

Ferris: Cameron, what have you seen today?
Cameron: Nothing good.
Ferris: Nothing - wha - what do you mean nothing good? We've seen everything good. We've seen the whole city! We went to a museum, we saw priceless works of art! We ate pancreas!

--Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

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Yesterday I took the girls to Washington, DC, so we could go view some of the extremely historical stuff they have there. Those of you who have driven in DC know that parking is a huge headache, especially on days ending in "y". So unless I get very lucky and spot someone actually pulling out of a space, I usually head down to the Ronald Reagan Building and park in their garage for the flat $10 weekend fee and be done with it. This is a decent, centrally-located place, steps away from the Washington Monument.

The bad news (for the girls) was that our ultimate destination was the National Gallery of Art, which is 'way back up the Mall toward the Capitol Building. NGA is actually two buildings, designated "West" and "East", with a street between them (but a tunnel connecting them underground). We were headed toward the East Building to see the Edward Hopper exhibit.

I've actually been to a Hopper show before, at the Whitney Museum (I think) in New York City, and this collection was comparable to that one. I think, however, that the overall organization of the pieces was a little better at the previous show.

This show was broken down into several categories. First there was a collection of his etchings (Evening Wind is seen here). The galleries then went through several historical periods, when he lived in Gloucester, MA, then New York City (he took an apartment in 1913 that he lived in until he died in 1967), then he learned to drive and started to spend a lot of time in New England again. Close to the end is a small auditorium which is showing a short film about the artist and his work, narrated by Steve Martin.

After that are two more rooms which have some of his most iconic and famous pieces, including Nighthawks, which is instantly recognizable and probably one of the most-imitated/parodied pieces of art ever. This is a guess on my part, but it's probably second only to the Mona Lisa in that category.

So what happens is that you have a pretty popular exhibit in the first place, which means that you have to get in a line to see it. Spectators get to enter in these dribs and drabs as a means of crowd control, but it doesn't help much; it's still pretty busy in there. But you also get people who will give no more than a cursory glance to the etchings or the Gloucester paintings so they can get to Chop Suey (seen here), or Automat (not--do your own damn research already), because these are the ones with which they feel familiar.

Plus you get the crowd that feels as though, because they read the flyer before they got into the exhibit, they're much more knowledgeable than the rest of us. "Look at the expression on that woman's face," they'll say. "Can't you feel the underlying tension?" Or: "The city is usually so bustling except in his images. Look at all the loneliness, all the isolation, the relative lack of movement." Or: "Did you notice that he paints a lot of telephone poles but never any wires? The poles are reduced to compositional elements." Shut up, already. I read the brochure too but I'm not about to parrot it just to make myself look smarter. 

OK, so you're wading through all of this, and then you get to the short film. And you may stop in and watch for a few minutes. Now, if you're there for the end, you're basically about to get caught up in a whole new rush of people who want to see the last two rooms, which is where Nighthawks, and Gas, and New York Movie (here), and basically several or his most famous works. But now the room is totally gummed up with the lowbrows who want to see only the famous stuff, plus the movie crowd who want to see this stuff and/or just get out already, plus the few serious people who are desperately trying to get a good look at the artworks. We were in Group #3, except for Wee One, who had had just about enough and sat herself in a corner until Daughter and I were ready to leave.

We finished up with Hopper and went through the tunnel to the West Building, where we had some lunch in the café there. Then up into the building where we got to see several paintings and sculptures by Rodin and Degas. The girls liked those a lot, even when Wee One caught grief from a security guard because she'd touched the pedestal of one of the statues. He had a cool way of expressing how she shouldn't touch the artworks, though, so it was a low-stress moment.

All in all, it was a pretty relaxing day. Then we got home and GF had us take out all the Christmas decorations. The girls decorated the tree and GF and I busied ourselves with other aspects of decorating, but we're far from done. In fact, right now the living room looks kind of like Christmas came in and puked all over the place. We'll have the house completely decorated just in time for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I think. 

Comments

[Ashlie]

You should have rode the Marc train ;). Just kidding. I've lived here two years and haven't seen half of what DC has to offer. For shame....

[yellojkt]

I'm planning on going to see that show this weekend. You've really whetted my appetite. The Reagan building is the parking secret of DC. I last went for the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival and got street parking in front of the Red Cross. A long walk, but the price was right.