National Portrait Museum

We have still been busy doing lots of sightseeing this summer. It is fun to have my niece Suzy with us still--it gives us a good excuse to see the city. We spent one afternoon at the National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum. This was a very cool museum--it is actually two museums in one building. It reopened in 2006 after a six-year renovation--it was closed when we lived here before--so this was our first time visiting. The kids were not super excited to go, but we enticed them by the idea of a scavenger hunt.

We first went and saw the section on the American Presidents. Afterward, we headed upstairs to the third floor Luce Gallery for the scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt had a 4th of July theme, so we had to find three paintings with American Flags, the bust of Benjamin Franklin, etc. It was really well done and the kids had a great time running around to find all the items. This part of the museum was very kid friendly--unlike some other portions of the museum where there were a lot of guards who seemed to have nothing better to do than to follow us around and wait for us to break some minor rule (by the way, only adults are allowed to push strollers).

In the Luce Gallery on the third floor.



We also visited the American Origins gallery. We did our own mini scavenger hunt to see who could first find the portrait of Joseph Smith. Rachel was our winner.

The building itself is worth a visit. I loved how this painting above Benjamin was done on a curved wall and the painting itself was curved. This museum is actually in the old Patent Office where Lincoln held his second inaugural ball shortly before he was assassinated, and there is a neat portion of the museum that tells all about that. The kids had fun learning the waltz there.

There is also a beautiful courtyard with these neat flat "puddle" fountains. For some reason there was no guards here, and no signs to tell us otherwise, so I let the kids play in them.