Sculpture, Dada and More Sculpture

So I finally posted my pics from my cultural excursion on Presidents Day.

(Hey, gimme a break, it's only been two weeks. And it was 187 photos. 192 with a few crops.)

Here's the Flickr set: Sculpture, Dada and More Sculpture. I have to admit, I did a half-assed job on the captions.

I ditched the car and metroed in to the Smithsonian stop, cut across the Mall and headed through the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. It was a beautiful cloudless day -- the sky was very blue.

Moondog.

I didn't have time to dally, since I didn't get there until about 2pm, so I headed over to the National Gallery of Art East Building:

I like the East Building; it's filled with interesting angles and leading lines -- it's a very interesting space. Although I hear that like many I.M. Pei buildings, it's a lot better to look at than to work in.

After passing through the lobby, I headed up to the Dada exhibition. It wasn't really crowded.

Now, it was a "no photography" dealio, so I was civilly disobedient and got a bunch of furtive shots, which explains the poor composition, bad angles, blurriness and generally poor photography:

There was a woman wearing a moustache, presumably to get in the spirit of things. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of her.

One of my favorite spots in the East Building is the top of the tower stairs. I couldn't get a clean shot looking down, so I looked up:

This pic has been treated pretty heavily to bring out the walls, but I kind of like it.

Anyway, there are a few interesting pics in the bunch. As noted before, I also like watching how other observers interact with the art and the space:

After Dada, I checked out a few more pieces:

Angel of History

With time running short, I went over to the Hirshhorn Museum. There were some interesting pieces, especially Hiroshi Sugimoto, but I'm not going to recreate my Flickr set here.

Okay, maybe just a few:

Seascapes

Mustn't forget my favorite scuplture at the Hirshhorn; it's
Sculptural Construction of Noise and Speed, by Giacomo Balla.

Anyway, that's about it. (Oh, and I bought a salt and pepper shaker set in the gift shop, I still need to take a picture of them.) As I was walking back, I had a nice shot of the sunset -- the Smithsonian castle, the Washington Monument, contrails and clouds criss-crossing over the sun... but then my battery died and I didn't have a spare.

Oh well.