Week of July 25th 2011: The Smithsonian Museums and the National Portrait Gallery

I was originally going to do a post for every museum I visited, but I think it may get a little tiring if there are 30 posts from this trip. I'm going to do a lot of condensing so even though I could write a book on the Smithsonian museums, I'm going to try to limit it to a blog post... you may need to read this one in a few goes. I am also including the National Portrait Gallery.
(I also apologize for the poor picture quality - this is the camera that fell down some rocks and went swimming when I was in Los Angeles and it never quite recovered)

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My first stop on the Smithsonian tour was the American History museum. I knew next to nothing about the museum and wasn't really looking forward to it but it was the closest to where I was and I was dying to get out of the heat. Well, to say the museum surpassed my expectations would be an understatement.

I may be biased though... I decided to explore the museum in order and of course the first exhibit I wandered into explored Los Angeles in the early 90's. For those not aware, this was basically my childhood. It was fun to see an exhibit that explored the place I lived as a kid especially when there was one board specifically on the San Fernando Valley.

The American history museum is also where you can find a lot of really cool American relics. In one extremely dark and chilled room, the original Star Spangled banner can be seen. It's basically in shreds after all of these years so the museum is doing it's best to preserve it (and of course that means no photography so you will have to go check it out for yourself).

After that, I decided to check out the Hall of First Ladies. I think many people may be familiar with this exhibit, but as I had said, I knew next to nothing about this museum before visiting it. The first hallway that I walked down had beautiful sketches of many historical First Lady Inauguration dresses. I was so excited, I decided to start snapping photos of all of them, especially those before I was born. I thought it was so cool that I could see what they all looked like.... until I went into the next room and they were all on the display. The actual dresses. I'm not very big into fashion, but that was cool. Of course the more recent dresses were in the center of the room, including Michelle's dress from 2008. I really enjoy seeing things in person that I had seen on TV. There is something fascinating about being able to get a close up on those little details that just don't get caught on the camera.

The last exhibit that really caught my eye was the one on Film and Television. This is where you can find some more fun artifacts from our country's great entertainment industry such as Dorothy's ruby red slippers and some of the original Muppets. My favorite piece though of course was the 70's Batman TV show Catwoman costume. I found it very entertaining that a few weeks earlier I was able to see the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman suit when I was at the Tim Burton exhibit. This means I only have one more Catwoman suit to track down and that movie isn't even out yet. 


The best part of the whole museum though was seeing a picture of one of my friends in the robotic section. It turns out, his contributions to that field earned him and his team a spot in the Smithsonian which was really cool to see. I was so proud of him and also felt like I knew a celebrity. When anyone else walked by, I wanted to brag that I knew that guy. 

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Extra in Independence Day

After the American History Museum, I went next door to the Natural History Museum. Typically, I don't get excited about natural history museums because to me, they are just a collection of stuffed animals. However, after being thoroughly impressed with the American History Museum, I decided to give it a shot. 

 There definitely were a lot of collections of stuffed animals, but it was way more than that. The facts and displays they had were really interesting. I think I'd just gotten turned off from them because I had seen a really boring exhibit on mammals a year earlier. The ocean exhibits were particularly cool since they had a fun exhibit of Giant Squid - which I've decided are the inspiration for quite a few movies about aliens. It was also cool to see the Paleontology exhibits. I hadn't really been to a museum with nearly that many fossils (even though these were just copies, of course). 


But I'm sure it's easy to guess what I liked the best.... the Hope Diamond! I also wasn't expecting to see this on my museum excursion, but I really should have known it was there since it was a big plot point on one of my favorite South Park episodes. The Hope Diamond and all of the other jewels are extremely beautiful. I really enjoy seeing diamonds of different colors. It's also fun to see something different. 

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Maybe he'll catch the road runner?

The next day, Mike had to work in the morning so I was on my own again. After visiting the National Archives (which we'll get to later), I decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery and its Sculpture Gardens. I thought on a lovely July day, a midday walk through the sculpture garden would be nice - well, I really overestimated my ability to handle heat. 8 years in the Bay Area has left me really incapable of handling seasons. Plus, even though I grew up in Los Angeles, the dry heat was much more bearable than the stifling humidity of the East Coast. I quickly took my walk through the garden and ended up spending a long time sitting with my feet in the fountain. 


As you can imagine, I was eager to get into the air conditioned Portrait Gallery. The portrait gallery is really large and broken up into two museums. The first wing has more classical art. Since I had several hours to kill and didn't feel the need to go outside again, I was able to explore both thoroughly. I think a lot of the classical pieces are similar to a lot of posts I've written about before so I'm going to brush over that pretty quickly. The only thing that really stood out to me was that once again, this museum had a Degas Ballerina. Since I had just seen another in New York the week before, I finally came to the conclusion that there were several of them. I also went in search of the Dutch wing to see if they had the Girl with the Pearl Earring. Still no luck so I finally broke down and looked it up. It's in the Hague of course but I'm excited to report that it's coming to SF in a few months and I can't wait to see it in person.

The second part of the museum has more modern and contemporary art. The two wings are connected by a space like tunnel that really reminds me of Space Mountain at Disneyland. When I got to the other side, there was a great contemporary art exhibit. The floor space for it was very open with a split level so when you walk up to it, the first thing you see is a display made up of dozens of hands saying things in sign language. I wish I had been able to translate!

Across from that was another cool piece of art - a giant black and white portrait of an older lady. It didn't seem that crazy... until I looked closely and saw that it was made up of thumbprints! I love how contemporary art has different angles like that. Something can seem so normal until you get up close and see that it's far more complicated.

The wing had several other standout pieces but then you always have the "I could have done that" stuff. For me, it was a wall that looked like it had been scribbled on with crayon. I actually used to that as a kid and got into a ton of trouble for it. Turns out I could have been an artistic genius who was suppressed before her full potential was reached.

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The last museum I went to visit was the Air and Space Museum. Even though this was one of the ones I was looking the most forward to, I was pretty beat by the time I'd gotten here. Two straight days of looking at Museums, Memorials, Archives, and the Political System (you have many fun posts to look forward to) had me a little museum'd out.


This time I wasn't alone though. My friends Nate and Mike joined me. Mike had been working all day so we literally left him to take a nap while we explored. The biggest thing I remember was that we spent a lot of time in the Wright Brothers exhibit. I was really interested in just how these guys finally pulled off the mechanics of flight. Nate was similarly interested so we both were really engrossed in all of the mechanisms they had in the room. 


I wish I'd been able to explore the museum more but at least there was one more highlight that is really neat. Along the sidewalk, they have all of the planets in our solar system, proportionally spaced from each other. In front of the museum, there is Pluto (I know, I know, but the Smithsonian website also says nine planets so I feel comfortable with this) and the rest of the planets, some comets and the sun are placed at one ten billionth of their actual scale. It was a cool thing to see and something to keep us entertained on our walk back to the Metro station.

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The Smithsonian museums are amazing. I could have spent weeks in there and I hope some day I get to go back and see more of the exhibits in detail, as well as the museums I missed. I'm really jealous of my D.C. friends who get to see these fantastic learning centers on a regular basis. 

Week of November 29th 2010: SF Weekly's Holiday Benefit at the Academy of Science

This was actually a week of deals since I found out about this event through a deal site as well. For $10, we got admission to this open bar benefit at the Academy of Science and how could I say no to that? So Eddy, Try and myself all bought tickets for it and on the first Wednesday in December, we were on our way to the event.

We got there and were instantly greeted by a table full of mini cupcakes and glowing drink mixers. We each grabbed a cupcake and mixing stick and headed to the bar. Eddy got an acai vodka flavored drink while Try and I got some apple cider with rum. We then found another mini cupcake table. I took a picture of the cupcake tower with my rum cider but I was trying to be discrete so the picture wasn't framed well.. oops!

From there we decided it was time to find some food. We walked around and found tables with pizza, mini quiches, chips and salsa, etc. While that may seem like a lot of food, the portions were tiny and we quickly realized the food to beverage ratio was quite small.

So why fight it? We gave up on many of the food booths and started checking out the alcohol sponsored tables. We found it almost impossible to not be holding two drinks at once. The acai vodka had a stand where they were making acai vodka lemonade drinks. They were dangerously sweet.

Eddy also found a booth with whiskey and tequila shot samples. I may have made some man friends at that table when I told them about my prior experiences with Bourbon Whiskey. We both tried one of each although he had to help me finish mine.

After wandering around a little bit more, I found the wine sponsor. They only had two kinds but of course they were Chardonnay and Cabernet which are my two favorites. I ended up just standing around that table for a while enjoying the wines.

At that point, we were definitely feeling the effects of an open bar, alcohol sponsored event so we switched over to beer. Luckily for us, the event was also sponsored by Blue Moon. We ran into my friend Jeremy at the event (who happens to ALWAYS be at the same things as me, but that's another story) and he pointed out that they let you grab two beers at once - so we did and headed down to the aquarium.

I had come straight from work so my feet had started to hurt from my heels so we found a place to sit in the aquarium where we could watch the fish swimming over head. It was nice to rest a little bit and chat with my friends. But too much rest isn't good for anyone so we grabbed our beers and walked around the aquarium until the event ended. Honestly, I would go back to the Academy just to walk around the aquarium. Both times that I went, I didn't go to the aquarium until just before closing so I don't think I've ever gotten to look through it in as much detail as I would have liked. Guess we have to go back?

Week of August 23rd 2010: Night Life at the Academy of Sciences & La Trappe

Here's my first two in one post! I haven't decided if in general, I want to go chronologically or by order of magnitude (more exciting activity first) but it doesn't make a difference this week.

Thursday nights at the Academy of Sciences, they have this little event called Night Life where they open up the museum to over 21-ers only, serve alcohol and let you drink in the whole museum. And by the whole museum, I mean everywhere except the exhibits. Of course, we found that out after we had already gotten our first round. This was pretty frustrating because most of the exhibits didn't have a line at that time but by the time that we finished our drinks, they did. Since we had to wait in line, we only got to see a couple of things. So.. check where you can bring your drinks before you buy if you actually care about seeing museum exhibits and things.

Anyways... since we needed to occupy a bit of time until we finished our drinks, we went up to the living roof. I had really wanted to check this out since I could see it from my Arguello apartment and it took me a while to realize what it was. The roof was cool - it's definitely an awesome concept but there really isn't too much to see once you're up there and it was pretty chilly.

We finally finished our drinks and went to check out the Extreme Mammals exhibit. Don't let the name fool you, it was a little boring. I love animals and was hoping to, you know, see some. However it was just a lot of facts about different features different animals have. Anyway I describe it, it sounds more interesting than it was... the museum managed to take a great concept and arrange it as boring as possible...

I wanted to check out the rain-forest next but it had closed already (stupid drink rule) so we went to the aquarium. Nightlife and the Academy of Sciences is worth the visit even if this is the only thing you see. Like I said, I love animals and it was great seeing all the fish and snakes. They have some really amazing species there and it was amazing. Also, you can take drinks into the aquarium. Of course by this point we had decided to cut our losses and the chances of not being able to see an exhibit.

Overall it was really fun, just figure out where you can drink and where you can't. Roof and aquarium are ok, Rainforest and Extreme Mammals (now closed) are not... and everyone knows science is way cooler with a drink.


Next up is La Trappe. This one will be short - mostly because I was only there for a drink. Basicallly, if you love Trappist monk beers, this is a great place to get them in the city (I'm looking at you Eddy!). They have a wide variety of selections both from bottles and on tap, including the all famous Chimay.
Told you it would be short...

Until next time!

Week of August 16th 2010: Exploratorium

Like I said, the first few posts will be a backlog of what I've already done. This also means they might be shorter because it's hard to remember exactly everything that went on over a month ago...

My first foray into exploring San Francisco was one of those things Kevin and I had talked about doing, but never got around to. I remember the first time we drove past the Palace of Fine Arts and Exploratorium and he told me how much fun he had when he went there as a kid. Since I will never have the experience of being a kid in San Francisco (and that's never really stopped me from doing kid things anyways) I told him that he would have to take me someday. Jump two years into the future and we finally found the time to make it out.

Mostly the Exploratorium is exactly what you would imagine - a fun filled science center with a lot of "Did you know.." type of activities for kids. I had a fun time playing with all of the gadgets and things upstairs but if you're short on time, I think the downstairs has more interesting exhibits. However, make sure to see how sneaky of a hunter you would be in the sound section. You basically have to walk on gravel and see how much sounds registers from your footsteps. It's pretty tough, especially if you're heavy. The kids all did really well, I did ok (the hardest part was not talking for 10 seconds...), and Kevin did pretty bad. Sorry Kevin, you're just too heavy.

Like I said, downstairs was really cool. We first entered the food court area which has all of these geometric play structures for kids. As someone who likes to climb and used to seriously own jungle gyms as a kid, I was really wish I was half my height and age so I could play as well.

The next room was filled with mind games - my favorite! No, seriously, that stuff is my favorite. The first was a game where you had to put a stack of cards in two piles one was female names & family oriented words, the other was male names & work related words (one person had that set up, the other had female/work and male/family) and you had to see who could separate the stack quickest. I won both times. I'd like to think it's because I'm an a modern American woman who believes in career and family... or I'm just quicker.

There was also a table where you each held a board with eye slits in front of your face and had to "speak with your eyes" to the other person. This was pretty hilarious and I definitely got a few of the "Oh, I've seen that face before!" remarks. I'd also recommend the bluffing table... one person sees a set of cards and has to say the same statement 4 times, but one of the times it's actually true and the other has to guess which. We both failed.

We continued on our way and I saw this board that had pairs of adjectives (e.g. brave/timid, outgoing/introvert etc.) and you could slide panels to say how much of each quality your friend had. We had fun with it but I still stand by the fact that I can see the big picture and am not just detail oriented KEVIN!!! Just kidding, but seriously... have a sense of humor with it...

We kind of blew through the rest of the Exploratorium because we forgot to eat breakfast and were starving. A lot of it was optical illusions and stuff (cool stuff but nothing else that really popped out). There were a bunch of fun water fountains and things too that I started having fun playing with. At that point though Kevin's stomach was practically dragging me out of the place...

So much for a short post!

(oh and in case you're wondering, the actual Palace of Fine Arts structure was under construction so technically I haven't been there either)