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Washington, DC
A stranger with your door key explaining that I'm just visiting
If you ever wondered what it would be like to walk among a few hundred Japanese Cherry Trees in full bloom and successfully avoid being crushed by a few hundred thousand flower crazed tourists at the same time, then these images are for you. Here are six quick pictures (from my still new Olympus C-5060 with the wide angle lens adapter) of and about the Tidal Basin in Washington DC when it was all about the flowers.
If you went to Washington in search of a good art museum, you should probably go to the Hirshorn Museum on the south side of the mall. A truly comprehensive, evolving collection, one of the greatest anywhere. If you went to Washington in search of a good art museum building, then you would have to skip Gordon Bunschaft's (admittedly good but) one note Hirshorn and go directly to the East Wing of the National Gallery, a great building with a few good pieces in the basement.
Everyone loves the new World War II Memorial, with the glaring exception of architecture critics. It's too boring, it's not modern enough. Where are all the names, the somber wall or gimmicky minimalist sunken pools?
The World War II Memorial (which I hated before I went there) isn't that bad. It creates a suddenly urban place in the middle of the mall, an island in the park with fantastic views of the two closest monuments. Most of it is a little below grade, preserving the long views and helping to define the plaza. It doesn't really feel like it has anything at all to do with World War II, but I guess you can't have everything.
One of the driving forces of this particular visit is and was the National Building Museum, a great big building with a few rotating architectural exhibits, a big empty space and a pretty good bookstore. The big exhibit I had wanted to see was all about Sam Mockbee and the Rural Studio, including models, photos and a great big building made out of discarded yarn (I guess you had to be there). Also of interest was a show (with lots of cool models) all about concrete. It turns out that the future is translucent concrete. Really.
This is the brand new Udvar-Hazy Center out in the middle of nowhere, well actually right next to Dulles International Airport out in the middle of nowhere.
The Udvar-Hazy Center is a thousand foot long hangar with a lot of planes with a lot of room for a lot more. Additionally the museum features the expected Imax theatre and a totally unexpected observation/control tower that allows good views of one of Dulles' runways and lesser views of the rest. See (distant) planes take off, see (distant) planes land. That part sounds more fun than it was.
Half of the main hangar is devoted to commercial airliners, half devoted to military aircraft and missiles (the aircraft being infinitely more interesting than the missiles if you ask me). This is an enemy Russian MiG (back when Russia was the USSR), there are also a few swastika marked German planes (back when Germany was Nazi Germany) and the ever controversial Enola Gay, the US plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, back when the US's greatest generation initiated a nuclear age.
Not all of the planes are regular planes. The Space Hangar isn't open yet, but its star is installed and hard to hide. The US space shuttle Enterprise is in the process of being cleaned and restored, parts of its wings were dismantled during the Columbia investigation and other minor repairs were required.
The commercial aviation side of the main hangar is filled with a lot of planes and one superstar. This is taken from underneath an Air France Concorde, now grounded and just a museum piece like all the others. It's almost like seeing a rare wild animal in a zoo- sure it's great to see one up close but you just know that it's wrong and it should still be flying... somewhere...
