2006 OAH Convention Supplement

Monuments and Museums in Washington

Robyn Muncy

While you are visiting Washington, you may want to visit some of the city's familiar monuments and museums or check out some of the sites newer to the nation's capital.

From the conference hotel, the metro transports you quickly to the National Mall, where you can find many of Washington's greatest treasures. At Dupont Circle (directly south of the conference hotel on Connecticut Avenue), catch the red line to Metro Center; from there, transfer to the blue or orange line, either of which will take you to the Smithsonian stop. Exit and you will find yourself in the middle of the National Mall.

If the weather is nice, consider a walk through the war memorials. The recent opening of the World War II Memorial gives new context to the Mall's older commemorations of war. As you exit the metro at the Smithsonian stop, locate the Washington Monument and walk toward it. From that landmark, you can find your way to most of the others. Looking west, you see the Lincoln Memorial. Directly between you and Lincoln is the World War II Memorial, which opened in 2004 and celebrates the military and moral achievement of the Greatest Generation. To the right of Lincoln, expressing a completely different memory of war, the Vietnam War Memorial encloses a grief-stricken corner reverberating with the sense of loss also captured in the nearby Vietnam Women's Memorial. To the left of Lincoln stands the Korean War Memorial, which unlike the more usual granite monuments, comprises stainless steel statues of troops on patrol in a field reminiscent of a Korean landscape.

If you prefer to stay indoors, the Mall and environs have more to offer than you can possibly see in a day. Back at the Smithsonian metro stop, you are not even half a block south of the National Museum of American History (NMAH) and only a block north of the Holocaust Museum. Both are open 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. daily. During the convention, the Holocaust Museum will host a special exhibit, "Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race," which analyzes the Nazis' horrific desire to commandeer genetic science in service of creating a biologically superior Germany. Also on display is an exploration of the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and the Museum's Committee on Conscience is sponsoring an exhibit on Darfur as part of its mission to raise awareness of genocide in the world today. These exhibits do not require timed-entry passes. To view the permanent exhibition, "The Holocaust," visitors may pick up free timed-entry passes at the Museum itself or purchase passes ahead at <http:// www.tickets.com/>.

In keeping with the theme of the conference, the NMAH allows you to see "Azucan! The Life and Music of Celia Cruz," featuring music, costumes and other artifacts related to the Cuban-born Queen of Latin Music. Also opened since our last meeting in Washington is "Separate is Not Equal: Brown vs. Board of Education," mounted in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Brown decision. And, of course, you can still visit Julia Child's kitchen, the house from Ipswich, Massachusetts rebuilt inside the museum to illustrate two-hundred years of American history, and the shoes whose clicking heels finally took Dorothy back to Kansas.

Walking on Constitution Avenue toward the Capitol from the NMAH, you reach the National Archives. Even those who have already filed by the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights may want to stop in to see the recently renovated Rotunda and exhibit spaces of the national research center. Reopened in September 2004, the Rotunda seems strikingly new with its restored murals and the founding documents of the Republic now displayed more fully and accessibly. Furthermore, an area called Public Vaults opens approximately 1,100 additional documents to the public on a rotating basis. Visitors read treaties, letters to the presidents from ordinary citizens, census schedules, homestead applications, and much more. In April, a temporary exhibit, "The Way We Worked," explores Americans' experiences of work between 1857 and 1987. The exhibit hall is open daily from 10 a.m.-7 p.m.

From the National Archives, you can easily find the newest museum on the Mall, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). On Constitution Avenue, travel toward the Capitol and turn right in between the East and West Buildings of the National Gallery of Art. You will see the sandstone curves of this tribute to the Native peoples of the Americas. During the convention, visitors will be able to see the first new exhibits mounted at the museum since its opening: "Listening to Our Ancestors: The Art of Native Life Along the North Pacific Coast" and "Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake."

Not far from the Mall you can visit the National Building Museum or the Library of Congress. The metro's red line stops right in front of the Building Museum (at Judiciary Square), and the Library of Congress is easily reached from the Capitol South stop on the orange/blue lines. The Building Museum at 4^th and F Streets is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday- Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. on Sunday. When you enter the building, the exquisite Corinthian columns—some of the tallest in the world—guide your eyes skyward in the great hall. The Museum continually sponsors an exhibit on the built environment in Washington, D.C. and during the convention will be showing "Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community." The Library of Congress, where many of you have mined manuscript collections, government photographs, or rare periodicals is a place where the grandeur of the main reading room underscores the nobility of scholarly inquiry. In April, the Library will be celebrating the tercentenary of Benjamin Franklin's birth with "Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words," a part of the American Treasures exhibition on view 10 a.m.-5 p.m. in the Jefferson Building. Illustrating Franklin's wide spectrum of interests, artifacts in this exhibit range from his designs for bifocal glasses to engravings of his political views.

Once you are on Capitol Hill, you may want to step into the Folger Shakespeare Library or Sewall-Belmont House. Located in the eastern shadow of the Jefferson Building at 201 East Capitol Street, the Folger is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Saturday. Here, you can always see a First Folio of Shakespeare's plays dating from 1623, and in April, "Golden Lads and Lassies: Shakespeare for Children," a display of the myriad ways that Shakespeare's stories have been retold in children's books, toys, videos, and theater. If you are staying on through Sunday, April 23, you might celebrate the bard's birthday at the Folger 12 p.m.-4 p.m.. Renaissance music, dramatics and storytelling prepare visitors for Queen Elizabeth's cutting of the cake at 3:30. Only two blocks away from the Folger at 144 Constitution Avenue, Sewall-Belmont opens 11 a.m-3 p.m. on Thursday/Friday and 12 p.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday. Former home of feminist Alice Paul, Sewall-Belmont documents the campaign for women's suffrage in the U.S. and the subsequent struggle for gender equality.

To learn more about Nuestra América, plan to visit the Cultural Institute of Mexico, a central meeting place for artists and scholars of Mexico in the District of Columbia. Located at 2829 16^th St., N.W. (two blocks from the Columbia Heights stop on the Metro's green line), the Institute will in April feature artwork from Tijuana and San Diego. For details, see <http://www.instituteofmexicodc.org>.

If you cannot spare too much time away from the convention hotel, you can still enjoy some of Washington's special places. Tucked into the corners of the hotel's neighborhood you will find delights both visual and intellectual. The Textile Museum at 2320 S Street, for example, exhibits textiles from around the world in an elegant brick town house dating from the Progressive era. During the convention, the museum hosts "Harpies, Mermaids and Tulips: Embroidery of the Greek Islands and Epirus Region." Nearly next door at 2340 S Street stands another Progressive era home, that of 28th president Woodrow Wilson. Open 10 a.m.-4 p.m., the Wilson House will celebrate Wilson's 150^th birthday during the convention, and your OAH/NCPH badge earns one dollar off of the usual admission price. South and east of these sites, at 1600 21^st Street is the Phillips Collection, the coziest art museum in town, which features nineteenth- and twentieth-century American and European paintings. You can see Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party," a staple of the permanent collection as well as "Degas, Sickert, and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris, 1870-1910," an exhibition on its only U.S. stop of a world tour. The Phillips is open Thursday 10 a.m.-8:30 p.m., Friday/ Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday noon-7 p.m.. Not far away at 2118 Massachusetts Avenue is Anderson House, headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati. Open Thursday-Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Anderson House exhibits items related to the American Revolution.

For information on the many other opportunities available in Washington during the convention, try <http://seewashingtondc.net/capital.htm>. For exhibitions at the Smithsonian's Museums in particular, visit <http://www.si.edu/exhibitions/>. For information on National Park Service sites, see <http://www.nps.gov/nacc/>.