Day 46 – Bike to the Mall, Food Truck Lunch, More Museums - June 6, 2018

It was another beautiful spring day and Alison biked to work again. I rode in later and met her for lunch at one of the many food trucks that gather near her office in D.C. We walked over to the Hirshhorn Museum and ate in the courtyard. Then, it was back to work for Alison and off to the museums for me.

The National Air and Space Museum is easy to find on the mall – it’s the place where all the junior high school kids in the country seem to be at any given moment. There was an exhibit I wanted to see there, and I decided it was worth fighting my way through the unruly throngs to get to it. The exhibit was “Artist Soldiers: The AEF Art Program”.

It is a collection of sketches and paintings done by illustrators recruited by the American Expeditionary Force in 1918 when the U.S. entered WWI. It also included some striking photographs taken a few years ago by a photographer who was granted permission to explore underground bunkers discovered in a stone quarry in Northern France. French, American and even German soldiers used the underground space to shelter them from the constant bombardment above ground. Some of these spaces had staircases that led directly to the trenches.

The remarkable feature of these caves is the collection of carvings on the walls that were made by the many soldiers who stayed there. They’re like a cross between graffiti and bas relief sculpture. The images are quite moving, particularly when you consider what these soldiers must have been going through as they waited below ground for their turn to go up and ‘over the top’.

Also included in the exhibit are artistic items created from the by-products of war, such as vases made from expended shell casings. While here, I also watched an IMAX 3D movie about aircraft carriers – it seemed more like a long commercial for Lockheed Martin Aircraft that it did a movie, but it was entertaining anyway.

After that, I made a quick trip to the nearby National Botanical Gardens, where the ‘primeval forest’ section featured ancient ferns and a miniature dinosaur hidden away in the flora.

Then, I biked back over to the Hirshhorn Museum to see what was happening in modern art. I’ve been there a few times before and one of the exhibits, a very large man sitting in a contemplative pose, greeted me again. The main piece of art on display this day was a large painting/sculpture that encircled the entire third floor of the circular museum. It is a modern take on the famous diorama painting at the Gettysburg Battlefield Visitor Center/Museum in Pennsylvania.

By this time, it was near the end of the work day and I met up with Alison for our bike ride back home and our reunion with Andrew, Karen and Molly.

Next: Hut Night