Visiting the National Gallery

One of the delights in living in Washington, DC is having access to all the musems on the Mall. One of my favorites is the National Gallery of Art.

I’ve been there the past two weekends.

Two Saturdays ago I went to see RoboCop at Gallery Place. It was a fun movie to go and see but not nearly as good as the original. When I got out the day was bright and sunny and, for a change, actually warm.

In fact the temperature was above normal for a change. In the low 60s. Needless to say they were many people out enjoying the warm weather. Because as I think most people felt they knew this was not going to last and of course it didn’t. Thus the six inches of snow we got yesterday and the freezing temperature of today. But enough about what seems to be an endless winter.

After the movie I walked down to the Mall. Went by the National Gallery Sculpture Garden and wondered if on such a warm day people would be ice skating. Sure enough they were. In fact, there was a pretty large group of people out skating.

From there I went to the Gallery itself. Since it was such a nice day, there were a lot of people there. I saw the new van Gogh the Gallery has:

Washington, DC — Vincent van Gogh’s powerful and intense Green Wheat Fields, Auvers (1890), likely painted just weeks before the artist ended his life, goes on view in the National Gallery of Art’s West Building, Gallery M-83, beginning December 20. The painting was bequeathed to the Gallery by renowned philanthropist, art collector, and founding Gallery benefactor Paul Mellon (1907–1999), subject to a life estate in his wife, Rachel Lambert Mellon, which gave her the right to possess the work for her lifetime. She has now relinquished the remainder of her life estate, allowing the Gallery to take immediate possession of the work.

From there I went on to the Byzantium exhibit Heaven and Earth: Art of Byzantium from Greek Collections

In 330 Emperor Constantine the Great moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Italy some thousand miles to the east, near the site of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus Strait linking the Aegean and Black Seas. Renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul), the city became the largest and wealthiest in the Christian world. It remained the dominant power, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, for more than 1,000 years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. In the first-ever exhibition of Byzantine art at the Gallery, some 170 works of art, many never before lent to the United States, will be on view—among them mosaics, icons, manuscripts, jewelry, and ceramics. The works include newly discovered and unpublished objects and reveal the rich and multifaceted culture of Byzantium. Divided into five thematic sections, the exhibition explores the coexistence of paganism and Christianity, spiritual life in Byzantium, secular works of art used in the home, the intellectual life of Byzantine scholars, and the cross-influences that occurred between Byzantine and Western artists before the fall of Byzantium.

I didn’t stay all that long because there were so many people there.

This past Saturday I went back. Got to the Gallery just as it opened and enjoyed the exhibit.

I also saw The Dying Gaul: An Ancient Roman Masterpiece from the Capitoline Museum, Rome. Lucked out on that one too because it will be gone in a couple of weeks:

Created in the first or second century AD, the Dying Gaul is one of the most renowned works from antiquity. This exhibition marks the first time it has left Italy since 1797, when Napoleonic forces took the sculpture to Paris, where it was displayed at the Louvre until its return to Rome in 1816. A universally recognized masterpiece, the Dying Gaul is a deeply moving celebration of the human spirit.