Tuesday June 8th - Saturday June 11th 1999

Washington also has a large selection of galleries; we only had time to visit some of them. The first we visited was the sculpture garden of the Hirshhorn Museum, again on the National Mall. This is a very pleasant sculpture garden which I had visited on my last trip to DC two years ago, but it was well worth a return visit. The collection includes works by Rodin, Henry Moore and Miro, and is described as a place for quiet contemplation. My two favourites were a tribute to the citizens of a French town (Orleans?) by Rodin, and Lunar Bird, by Miro.

While we were passing the White House, we decided to check out the Renwick gallery on Pennsylvania Avenue, and we were very glad we did. They had two special exhibitions on, one of which was a fascinating collection of Shaker furniture. The Shakers must have been one of the strangest religious sects around, and ultimately self-defeating: all members had to be celibate, which inevitably made sustaining the group entirely dependent on new converts. Still, they were famous as the first people in America to market packets of seeds for fruit and vegetables, and were largely self-sufficient. Their design ethos was a triumph of functionality, which in fact lent itself to a simple beauty. The permanent collection contained two of the most astonishing pieces I've ever seen, and both are shown below.

The first purports to be a grandfather clock wrapped in cloth. Nothing amazing about that, you might think, but it is one of the most astounding pieces of trompe de l'oeil I've come across, as the cloth is actually carved out of wood. As I read the caption explaining this, my jaw must have dropped, as the security guard laughed aloud at my expression. The detail is so exquisite that it's hard to believe that the cloth is carved and is not real.

The second piece is Carlos Fuente's Game Fish, a rendition of a sailfish made entirely out of plastic toys, including an Action Man, Popeye, dice, chattering false teeth, marbles etc.

Our next gallery was the Freer Gallery of Art on Independence Avenue. This had a particularly impressive collection of Chinese pottery dating back up to 5,000 years, and an equally impressive collection of Buddhist art. But for me, the highlight of the collection was undoubtedly The Peacock Room, by James McNeill Whistler. Originally built in London, it was later bought by an American collector, dismantled and shipped to the US. It consists of an entire room decorated with a peacock motif, and is truly astounding.

The final picture is of a statue from the National Statuary in the Capitol. This room displays statues of great men (and a few women) from American history, but to my mind, by far the most interesting was the statue of the first king to unite all Hawaii into one Kingdom, as it contrasted starkly with the "men in suits".