[slideshow]
A few comments:
1. NMNH in the captions = National Museum of Natural History, aka the Smithsonian’s absurdly fun enormous collection of dinosaur bones, a giant squid, the Hope diamond, meteorites, BUGS, elephants, a crochet coral reef that lives up to its hyperbolic name…
2. The National Art Gallery has a great temporary exhibit featuring Arcimbaldo, a painter whose work in the 1500s was pretty strange for the time. I’ll go out on a limb and say there are similarities between some of his paintings and those from later artists, like Dali.
3. The National Art Gallery also features a Munch exhibit with some beautiful pieces demonstrating the progression from a painting’s conception to completion. There are quite a few drafts of “Death and the Maiden,” “The Kiss,” and “Vampire,” in addition to…early versions of “Madonna” — which prompted this discussion:
K: This was definitely done during his teenage years.
N: Um, there are sperm in this painting.
K: Science content!
Proof: science and art do mix. [though I’m pretty sure the later drafts of the painting excluded the sperm border work.]