National Art Gallery

Quinn's class took another field trip into DC and Ginger signed me up to play the part of one of the chaperons again. Although when I did show up somehow the teacher didn't know I was going, so I almost didn't go. But things worked out and I went, which is good considering I had already told work I wasn't coming so it's not like I had anything else to do. Today's trip was to the west building of the National Gallery of Art.


The metro ride in was uneventful. For traveling later in the morning though there were still a fair number of people on the train. But we made it to our destination in one piece and we didn't lose any of the kids along the way, so that counts as a success.




Once we arrived on the mall we posed for some class pictures. I took a lot, and none of them had all the kids looking good. Eventually I decided if 75% of the kids looked decent I was going to call it a good shot.


After that we made our way into a grassy area that was cordoned off to stop and have lunch. I assume they've blocked these areas off because of grass being destroyed by people walking on it (like you can see in the shots from the middle of the mall). But there were no signs explicitly telling us *not* to go into the area, so I convinced everyone it would be okay. And really, what's the worst that could have happened, we're all arrested? Okay, that might be bad, but it didn't happen and later other people followed our lead and entered the area for picnic lunches also (I'm apparently a trend setter).




After that it was on to the museum. Once inside they came up with a plan for which areas they wanted to visit. The first was sculptures.


So what we have here is a detailed examination of the female form. There was something about this one that speaks to me.


Whoa whoa whoa, no one told me there was going to be nudity! Think of the children! In this one I see him saying "Where did I leave my pants!"




Then it was upstairs to the paintings. There are so many paintings there was no way to cover them all. So they concentrated on explaining a couple of them. We barely even got through more than three of the rooms. We barely made it through the 18th and 19th century French artists. If you look at the floor plans, we only visited rooms 89, 85, 86 and 84. And before you knew it was time leave to head home. Even limiting the rooms visited we still ended up getting back later than we intended.