National Museum of Art

Saturday, May 30, we went to the National Museum of Art. There are two buildings, the West building has the old masterworks and the East building has the Modern and Contemporary art. The consensus was that we loved the West building and that we didn't quite "get" the East building.

There was such an amazing feeling being in this place that held famous artwork from the Renaissance to the early 20th century. It was a feeling of being in the presence of something special, something exquisite, something bigger than us. There were security guards in each room to make sure we kept our distance, but most of the paintings were not behind glass so you could really see them as they were meant to be seen.



Monet. We loved the Impressionists the best.



This is the only Leonardo DaVinci in the Western Hemisphere. (This one was behind glass.) He painted "Genevra" when he was 23 years old. He only painted three portraits. "Mona Lisa" was painted over 20 years later.


Calder's enormous mobile takes up most of the space in the atrium of the West building. We liked Calder's smaller mobiles too.

This was some of the art we didn't quite understand. But Mara is trying.