First? The Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. I may be a complete visigoth, but I just didn't get about half of what was in this museum. I like art that gets a reaction. It doesn't have to be a huge Mapplethorpe reaction; in fact, I think that art that sacrifices the art for the sake of the reaction misses. (I'm reminded of the play I was in my senior year, for a student in the directing class. It would have been easier to go into the audience and bludgeon them. But, my dad liked it, so I guess it was worth it.)
But the Hirshorn had stuff like this: 
This was the first in a series of 4 or 5, I think. I think it's actually pivoted 90 degrees, but I'm not sure. And I don't particularly care, as I don't think that my personal enjoyment of the piece would be enhanced by rotating it. However, my personal enjoyment of the piece absolutely was enhanced when I looked at the title.
Yeah. It's makeup. Because, you know, you can't see little strips with much the same coloring and layout at the CVS. My apologies to the artist, I'm sure it's not you, it's me.
The other thing that was really cool was the Voyager true scale solar system. The sun appears outside of the Air and Space Museum, and then each of the planets appear to scale along the road. It's not entirely true; no, despite what the Weekly World News tells you, the planets aren't in alignment just like that. And the other part is that they still had Pluto as a planet, up by the Smithsonian Castle. (But so do we in this house, so I'm okay with that.)
I may have the official name wrong, but here I am. . .next to the sun. The planets are all displayed in a true scale size.
