Our Destination Realized: The Smithsonian Institution

We drove all the way across the country, through thirteen states to visit the Smithsonian and all we got was this lousy T-shirt:

Just kidding. We are exhausted and we completely over did it with an epic week of exploration at the museums and zoo of the Smithsonian Institution (not institute like I always thought).

The Smithsonian Castle at Sunset

The first building we went into was the Castle, because Hannah needed to go potty. It turns out that apart from asking directions, going potty is about all you can do at the Castle. It's mostly used for offices.

The sculpture gardens connected with the Art Museum are beautiful with a lot of very modern sculpture.

After a quick rest on the lawn to sit and drink some juice, we began our first museum adventure with the Museum of American History.

Here are the excited energized children on their first day of museum exploration.

Hmmm... this looks a lot like what they do at home.

We didn't know it yet, but this turned out to be the best part of the American History Museum. Much of the museum seems extremely politicized and watered down. There is a strange over indulgence in written descriptions and overlaid photographs and video displays and much less actual content.

This whole section was called Invention something or other, but what it was in actuality was children's culture, and it was very sparsely filled. This is Eli watching Howdee Doodee advertizements. I was fascinated that the character in the show was singing about Rice Crispies. I had to explain about early commercials. Somehow the display didn't bother to actually teach why that was happening.

There was a strange array of information in every display. This was a part of the history of lifestyles in American culture, but it included the household culture of specifically a family of abolitionists. Here is a primer used to teach children there ABCs and also why slavery is bad simultaneously.

In an entryway to a section of the museum was this original Washington Monument created and rejected before the current building we know of as the monument to Washington. It is amazing how antithetical this statue is to the American ideals and what Washington stood for. Here he is placed in a seated position similar to a Greek God, and is sparsely dressed, two of the original criticisms of the statue along with several other issues that made it rejected for monumental status. Yet, here it is in the History Museum, now a strange object of ideological inconsistency.

This is the entry to the museum as we waited for Elijah to join us after his meeting. Ironically to the left of this is the section of the museum dedicated to technology. I couldn't help but see this process and technology of searching and scanning and security checking as just another exhibit in the museum, albeit a conceptual one. Most of the exhibits in this museum are interactive and many of them deal with issues of politics, economics, violence, and technology. All issues fully present in this one experience.

I'm still not exactly sure why this amazing collection of doll furniture all collected by one little girl in the 1950s warrants its own museum exhibit when so many things about our history and culture seem to have gone unnoticed, but it sure was a pleasure to watch Hannah admire the little dolls and furniture.

Izzy marveling at the gun boat designed by Benedict Arnold when he was still considered an asset to the American Revolution. History is a very strange thing. I wondered whether my children were able to take in the full spectrum of Arnold's history as we had learned of it in the last two weeks. An interesting example of so many political situations less black and white than we would like them to be.

Our next museum adventure was the Air and Space Museum. There were a lot of plane engines involved.

A picture of Elijah taking a picture of the kids pulling levers.

The inside of an airplane. We saw quite a few of these sorts of control panels, both for airplanes and for rockets.

And here is our small boy next to a very large engine.

An interesting bit of Civil Rights history included this display about segregation in the air.

Eli reading about the Tuskeegee Airmen, before we had to run into the planetarium show about the make up of stars.

One of the many displays about what we know about the planets around us. I found all of the information about planets, stars and the universe to be my favorite part of this museum. Seeing some of the imagery of distant worlds and some of the beautiful patterns in the creation and destruction of stars is incredibly thrilling.

Our third museum was the Museum of American Art, which is confusing because there is more than just American art in there. Perhaps it should be called the Museum of Western Art, or the Museum of Historically Dominant Culture Art or something. It was art from Greece to America, with a small room filled with Asian ceramics that for some reason wasn't in the Asian Art Museum across the lawn.

Hannah was being incredibly good and conscious about the art in the museum until we ran into another little girl just her age who was very interested in jumping and yelling. After that we had a lot of trouble containing Hannah, as she had been introduced to the idea that she did not have to control herself or be aware of the art.

The kids seem to be way more interested in sculpture at the moment. With sculpture it is possible to identify imagery, famous people from history that we know, or mythical creatures whose stories we have read, where paintings and drawings are often more interesting as a lesson in technique and composition.

Their favorite pieces were the ones that were or replicated ancient Greek and Roman imagery. This is Bacchus with a Satyr. Satyrs are a particular favorite, along with Artemis who Eli worships to such an extent that there is a shrine to Artemis in the boulder garden under the oaks on Paradise Rd.

Izzy is especially fond of Hermes. Here he is in his Mercury form in the middle of the beautiful rotunda in the center of the museum.

This was the last statue we looked at before the museum closed. It was especially moving for several reasons. First it is huge. These soldiers are close to life size and the whole thing takes up an entire large wall. Second, this is the battalion of African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War. The man on the horse is the white man who lead these troops, died at the front of the battle in the first 5 minutes and who this memorial statues was created to honor. This particular man, was raised on a transcendentalist commune and as such was an abolitionist. I mention him briefly in my dissertation, but not by name. The boys and I were very interested to find this statue.

Hannah did not last at the art museum and the boys and I had to go on without Elijah and the girl. After the museum we decided to ride the carousel we had been coveting for several days.

Eli chose the turning car which only turned when the carousel was not actually going, due to the centripetal force of the larger circling of the carousel. It is possible that a grown up could have made it actually move, but I had to stand by Hannah to keep her from falling off her horse. He made a valiant effort attempting to turn it however.

Izzy chose the only Mer-horse in the bunch. He decided that since it had two tails just like the Starbucks logo lady that it was a Starbucks horse.

After the carousel we sat down on the lawn of The Mall and admired our final museum destination. We saved the most coveted museum for last, the Museum of Natural History.

We tried to get there as early the next day as we could so that we would have plenty of time to see everything, but we have been having trouble adjusting to east coast time and so we only arrived at 11:30. We did manage to see most of the museum even so. Everything from dinosaur bones, to fossils, to sea creatures, to stuffed mammals, the entire history of prehistoric human development as we know it so far, mummies, living butterflies, insects, amazingly large diamonds and other fancy jewelry, minerals, rocks, and numerous other things the boys could tell you all about, but I have already forgotten.

The vast amount of dead, stuffed animals in the Natural History Museum may have been a huge part of the motivation for going to the Zoo the following day. I always find these dead exotic animals somewhat disturbing, especially the ones with the labels that say they are now extinct.

I managed to get video footage of the flight of a Blue Morpho butterfly, but I could not get one to open its wings so that I could take its picture. The butterfly hot  house was spectacular.

These are some of the possible mineral patterns discovered when one cuts into a meteorite.

We didn't feel quite done yet and so we stayed an extra day to go to the Smithsonian Zoo. It's free, but it turns out it is very difficult to park there, and the parking is actually expensive. We had to drive around until we found a parking garage a bit of a walk from the zoo. We did manage to pay less for parking that way though. And we discovered the Indian food we would later have for dinner by the amazing curry smell wafting at us as we came up from the parking garage.

Hannah was excited that these birds are pink.

Nice ladies feeding the Beavers and answering our children's questions.

 As far as Zoos go, this one has amazingly nice, large habitat areas for the majority of their animals. The Elephants were being taken much better care of than I have seen in most Zoos. But in the end a Zoo is a Zoo, and the boredom shown by the female lions and they pretended to occasionally attack each other but give up and lie down before completing the effort, was an example of the malaise that strikes me when I witness these large wild animals pend up and unable to roam. It is the great apes however that truly break my heart every time. If they look at you at all, some have their backs turned, they look with a sort of hollow gaze reminiscent of the expressions in the photographs of concentration camp victims taken by the rescuers. They don't quite see anymore, even though they are looking.

All in all it was an epic week of museum adventuring, just as we intended it to be. We only managed to see a small portion of the thirteen museums the Smithsonian offers. I guess that leaves us plenty of room to come back and see more another time. At this point the kids are exhausted, and so are the adults. We get a couple of down days and then we are off to tackle New York City.