Jim Henson’s Fantastic World
July 24th, 2008
As promised earlier, a picture from Jim Henson’s Fantastic World at the Smithsonian’s International Gallery. (Even though you are not supposed to take photos… here’s some blurry camera-phone for you) If you are a kid you will love this exhibit. If you are a grown-up, you will love this exhibit because it will remind you of being a kid. From Fraggle Rock to my personal favorite King Goshposh and his sidekick Featherstone, there are tons of things on display that will make you smile. The life-size puppets are the best part, and people enjoyed peering into the cases to look at the construction and detailing.
I thought Henson’s simple lines sketches were the most interesting. In many cases, a few pencil strokes was all it took for an idea to be born and described. You could see the personality of his character puppets long before they became 3-dimensional. It was also interesting to learn about all of Henson’s “failures” – ideas that were deemed too ridiculous at the time and never picked up.
And of course there was the always-adorable Kermit, innovative at the time for his soft structure which would allow the puppeteers to create tons of different facial expressions with just small changes in their hands and fingers.
Go go go! to the exhibit – you have to see it for yourself.
poor little duckies
May 23rd, 2008
I heard about
this story on the radio this morning and it’s so sad! Apparently baby ducks are getting sucked into the pond/pool equipment outside the
American Indian Museum (which is pictured above…) and a lot of tourists witnessed it. Ew!
This is otherwise a nice and enjoyable museum to visit, although I will say that I enjoy it more for the atrium space, staircase, and architecture than the actual exhibits themselves. Hopefully for the sake of the little ducks they will turn down the suction power of the pool equipment.
People Mover, Holga Style
March 12th, 2008
A product of the Holga camera, this shot was taken on what we like to call the “people-mover” (moving walkways as seen in airports) between the West Wing and the new East Wing of the National Gallery of Art.
YAY for kinda spring weather!
March 5th, 2008
In honor of the upper 60-degree days we’ve had this week, I’m posting a photo from one of the best warm-weather places to visit in DC : Dumbarton Oaks. For $8 bucks, (or its free over the winter months) you get to walk around the 10 acres of gardens and the museum, which was formerly owned by Robert and Mildred Bliss. They bought the property in the 20s, and turned it from a crappy, hilly cow pasture into a series of small formal gardens, a Roman-inspired ampitheater, a pebble garden and swimming pool, the rose garden, and the tree ellipse — which is where the photo was taken. It’s the best to just stumble along into the different garden areas while pretending that you are really loaded and this is your house. And you are having a big huge garden party later that night.
As an added incentive to visit, just down the street you can go to the exceedingly creepy Oak Hill Cemetery. If you don’t believe that it is creepy, then just look at the main picture on their webpage. When we were there an old black crow flew right by me from headstone to headstone screeching while it was in flight. ok, now i just got carried away. (back to work.)
Art Museum of the Americas
March 2nd, 2008
We rode our BIcycles! BIcycles! down towards the National Mall today to check out whatever we could check out. This involved a venture into
The Art Museum of the Americas to see the Mexico: Festival of Toys exhibit. (see creepy picture above). It was a kinda quirky little museum with only a few rooms, but there were some fun and colorful toys there in addition the scary skeleton thing. The spaces themselves were probably more interesting: some brightly painted niches in the curving stairway, a sunny hallway off the courtyard tiled in blue mosaic, and the courtyard itself – with empty swimming pool – that we couldn’t get outside to. There also happens to be a tall, rusty, yellow metal sculpture outside the entrance that I like because it reminds me of ribbon candy.
From there we walked towards
the Albert Einstein memorial which is easily my favorite sculpture in DC for its hidden location among a grove of trees… By this time Matt had worked himself into a self-described “hot-dog frenzy” so we stopped at one of the vendor carts to indulge in $10 worth of (2) hot dogs. YUM.
Onward! to visit Mr. Lincoln sitting on his throne overlooking the Reflecting Pool. And finally after that re-collected our bikes and rode home.
