'Praying Hands' closes Sunday at the National Gallery of Art

Albrecht Durer, The Men's Bath, 1496/1497, Albertina, Vienna

Another stunning exhibition which includes one of the world's most famous drawings, Praying Hands, comes to a close this weekend at the National Gallery of Art.

Albrecht Durer, Praying Hands, 1508, Albertina, Vienna

The single U.S. venue for Albrecht Durer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina, is the only time many of Durer's masterpieces have hung together.

By extraordinary arrangement and collaboration with the Albertina in Vienna, the repository of some of the artist's greatest masterpieces, the National Gallery has brought together the show which seems much larger than the 118 works spread over six galleries. On Friday afternoon the first galleries were packed, but strangely enough, Praying Hands had no spectators lined up when I was there, luckily for me, but the crowd thinned as the exhibition, arranged in chronological order, progressed.

(One way to see a crowded display is to advance to the works without viewers, enabling you to devour contents without being pushed or elbowed. You may not be able to see every work up close, depending upon your schedule, but some are better than none, and Durer's particularly are well worth close inspection with their detail and meticulous devotion to reality and perceived reality. They will leave you wondering how time permitted the artist to achieve all the fine line drawings in a little more than four decades, beginning with his self-portrait at age 13, which is found in the first gallery.)

Albrecht Durer, Nemesis (The Great Fortune), 1501-1502, Albertina, Vienna.  Nemesis was the Greek goddess of fortune and fate.  As she circles the globe, she carries a goblet for fortune and a bridle for fate.

The National Gallery's Andrew Robison, the Gallery's senior curator of prints and drawings, and the Gallery's staff spent ten years bringing the presentation to fruition which includes some of the Gallery's own engravings, woodcuts, drawings, and prints.

The Albertina's Durer collection starts with the Holy Roman Empire and Rudolf II whose favorite artist was Durer (1471-1528) born in Nuremberg and generally considered one of the four greatest Renaissance artists. (Can you name the others?*)

With pen, ink, brush, and chalk, he drew religious scenes, including the Last Supper, the Death of the Virgin, Adam and Eve, and other subjects such as the human body, nature, animals, and he depicted allegorical themes.

Albrecht Durer, The Death of the Virgin, 1510, Albertina, Vienna.  The apostles gather around Mary's deathbed, and John helps her hold a candle while Peter sprinkles her with holy water.

The year his mother died (1514) found Durer composing Melencolia I (found in the fifth gallery) which the label calls "perhaps his most original, complex, and puzzling image." Many objects fill the scene: a hammer, tools, an hourglass, a bat carrying a sign, a sad woman, maybe a self-portrait, a fallen angel with wings, resting at the end of life's journey, while she (or he) ponders what she may have missed on her passage. The sun sets or is that heaven with a shining star beckoning? Sitting nearby and hard at work on a tablet is a little boy whose head sits below judicial scales.

Albrecht Durer, Melencholia I, 1514, Albertina, Vienna. 

In the watercolor, The Great Piece of Turf (1503) in the third gallery, the viewer has the perspective of a dragonfly buzzing at a pond, amidst fine ferns and the natural environment.

A 300+ paged color catalogue, co-edited by Mr. Robison and Klaus Albrecht Schroder, director of the Albertina, is available.

The people of the United States are grateful to the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, the Melvin R. Seiden Memorial Fund, the National Gallery's Exhibition Circle, and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany for making the presentation possible.

*Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci are the others.

What: Albrecht Durer: Master Drawings, Watercolors, and Prints from the Albertina

When: Now through Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Where: the East Building Mezzanine, the National Gallery of Art, between Third and Fourth at Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.

Admission:  No charge

Metro stations: Smithsonian, L'Enfant Plaza, Archives-Navy Memorial, Judiciary Square

For more information: 202-737-4215

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19th century French art exits Sunday

Gustave Dore, The Shades of French Soldiers from the Past Exhort the Army to Victory on the Rhine, 1870. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Helen Porter and James T. Dyke Fund, 2006

Edgar Allan Poe fans familiar with the memorable illustrations by Gustave Dore of Poe's poem, The Raven, will not want to miss four original Dores which are part of a enchanting exhibition now in its final weekend at the National Gallery of Art.

Color, Line, Light: French Drawings, Watercolors, and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac presents 100 pieces from the 19th century French collection of James T. Dyke and his wife, Helen L. Porter, and from the National Gallery's collection made possible by the couple.

Alexandre Calame, An Ancient Pine Forest with a Mountain Stream, 1847. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Helen Porter and James T. Dyke, 1999

Dyke, who heads the Gallery's Trustees' Council, and Ms. Porter are avid collectors who “buy what they like” and not necessarily pieces which are in style at the moment, said Andrew Robison, one of the curators of the show.

"Jim likes to go to auctions" and says occasionally to Robison: "I don't like it, but I'll give

you the money to buy it."

Mr. Dyke and Ms. Porter have "built up this extraordinary collection...a really comprehensive view of 19th century French art" with "many (artists) you haven't heard of," Robison, an enthusiastic guide, said.

Robison and Dyke worked on the project for ten years.

Gustave Dore, A River Gorge in a Mountain Landscape. Dyke Collection

It is a "quiet" display, soothing and spiritually moving, with many invitations to novels which beg to be written. Muted tones and fairy-tale scenes evoke memories of long ago images from Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which match those mysterious, haunting places where you could wander amidst magical forests with castles and high peaks, alone and yet secure, guided by a mysterious path and hand.

Maxime Lalanne, Alpine Castle above a Wooded Lake, c. 1870. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Helen Porter and James T. Dyke Fund, 2006

The artworks flow chronologically by style in five galleries which the catalogue (edited by Mr. Robison and co-curator Margaret Morgan Grasselli) follows: Romanticism (with three Dores), Realism and Naturalism (one Dore), Impressionism, Nabis and Symbolists (which I have nicknamed the Lemmen Gallery after one of Dyke's favorite artists, Georges Lemmen, who has several on the walls here), and Neo-Impressionism (the "Signac Gallery" with eight by Paul Signac).

Hippolyte Petitjean, A Broad Valley at Sunset, c. 1897. Dyke Collection, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Lengthy descriptions of the different media the artists used (chalk, watercolor, graphite, pen and ink, charcoal, pastel) are an important part of this show.

Robison said the contents are "major works by minor artists and major works by major masters" (Cezanne, Degas, Millet, Monet, Pissarro, Seurat, Bonnard, Vuillard, Signac, Delacroix), and please don't overlook the women in the show, whom Ms. Grasselli pointed out:  Berthe Morison and Suzanne Valadon.

Francois-Auguste Ravier, A Marsh at Sunset. Dyke Collection

One of the most provocative works is Lemmen’s Two Studies of Madame Lemmen (1885). Two female figures stand, almost facing each other, but that's impossible since one stands farther back. They look towards the center of the chalk drawing, but not at each other. The shadowy silhouettes are dressed alike, and the dominant figure seems to offer her hand to the other.  Touching of their hands is hinted, however, distance between them prevents that.  What is in the background, please?  An open coffin?  To which she steps?  Or emerges?  Perhaps it is a piece of luggage before she embarks on a trip?  To where?  Is the larger figure an apparition who tries to warn or rescue the other? 

Georges Lemmen, Two Studies of Madame Lemmen, 1885. Dyke Collection, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art, Washington

You see what art can do!

This exhibition is another example of what I wish its staying power to be, to remain at the National Gallery and not go away so I can visit often for inspiration and palliative effects.

Charles Angrand, The Annunciation to the Shepherds, 1894. Dyke Collection

Please, are we soon going to expand to the other side of the street, and move to the Federal Trade Commission Building? Next week would be grand, so this show could hang in Washington a while longer. (It moves to the Musee des impressionnismes in Giverny to open July 27. Sigh.)

Ms. Grasselli called the exhibition "a banquet for the eyes."

P.S. And, for the soul. Who needs medication when there's art like this to carry you away to faraway, dreamy places?

A gallery talk by Kimberly Schenck begins at 2 p.m., May 24 at the Rotunda in the West Building

What: Color, Line, Light: French Drawings, Watercolors, and Pastels from Delacroix to Signac

When: Now through May 26, 2013, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sunday

Where: Main Floor, the West Building, National Gallery of Art, between Third and Ninth streets, NW, at Constitution Avenue

Admission: No charge

Metro stations: Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: 202-737-4215

patricialesli@gmail.com

Police cars on the Mall

Police cars at the National Mall last week/Patricia Leslie

A line of classic police cars was on display at the National Mall last week, transported from around the U.S. for the annual convention of National Police Week, held every year in Washington.

From the New York Police Department/Patricia Leslie

In 1962 President John F. Kennedy signed a proclamation designating May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day and the following week as Police Week, according to the Police Week website.

 

From Trumbull, CT/Patricia Leslie

 

Between 25,000 and 40,000 from the U.S. and around the world were expected to attend all or part of the convention which included the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service and candlelight vigil to honor officers who have given their lives in service. Last year 40 officers died while in service, according to preliminary estimates, an increase of 18 percent from 2011.  California had the most number of law enforcement deaths (7), followed by Arkansas (4).

From Peekskill, NY/Patricia Leslie

From the Wyoming Highway Patrol/Patricia Leslie

On the rear window of the Wyoming Highway Patrol car: In Memory of Trooper Peter Visser End of Watch 10-12-81 and Heroes Live Forever nearby/Patricia Leslie

Another car from the NYPD/Patricia Leslie

Inside the NYPD car/Patricia Leslie

 

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New moderns at the National Gallery of Art spark passions

Richard Artschwager, Piano/Piano, 1963-65/2011. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Collectors Committee/Patricia Leslie

Please, National Gallery of Art, throw a party with these artists and invite me. 

 
Four of the five are still living, and one's a woman.

Even for die-hard anti-moderns (I know a few), these new pieces, made possible at the National Gallery by its Collectors Committee, are worth a look, especially when you know a little something about the creators, like Hans Haacke (b. 1936 in Cologne) a leading political artist, whose specialities involve kinetic art, who helped birth institutional critique, or Ed Ruscha (b. 1937, Omaha) whose Stains (1969) include gun powder, cherry pie, and daffodils among 75 ingredients spread on different paper sheets.

The Collectors Committee has also acquired for the Gallery Piano/Piano,  1963-65/2011, by Washington's own Richard Ernest Artschwager (1923-2013) whose furniture business background helped steer him to artistic success.

The newest Artschwager consists of two laminated wooden pianos which intermingle in passionate embrace, an example of "synthetic cubism," according to the National Gallery, and on view in the East Building inside the interior "sculpture garden" near the Small Auditorium. Atschwager completed the piece for an exhibition last year in Rome.

Other new works come from Rineke Dijkstra (b. 1959, Sittard, Netherlands), the first of her achievements for the National Gallery, and Allan McCollum (b. 1944, Los Angeles) whose Plaster Surrogates, 1982/1989  (not on display yet), has toured the world.

McCollum is a self-taught artist who created his early works in a California storefront and then a parking garage after he tried acting, restaurant management, truck driving, and building crates for a West Hollywood art company where he mingled with art dealers, collectors and artists.  They influenced his artistic development and his direction into "quantity production." McCollum resonates with the history and development of local communities and their relationship to their particular geographies, as well.

Meanwhile, Haacke’s Condensation Wall, 1963-66/2013, stands in prominent position at the foot of the East Building’s main floor staircase. This example of minimal sculpture  and kinetic art becomes "a micro-environment contingent with its surrounding." Water collects and drops inside the sculpture, depending upon the temperature of the building, with the entire natural process and nearby art works visible through Condensation's transparent walls.

Hans Haacke, Condensation Wall, 1963-1966/2013. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Gift of the Collectors Committee/Patricia Leslie.  Behind Condensation Wall is Richard Serra's Five Plates, Two Poles, 1971, and Robert Motherwell's Reconciliation Elegy, 1978, another gift from the Collectors Committee.

 

 

One of Haacke's most famous works and an early example of institutional critique, Shapolsky et al. Manhattan Real Estate Holdings, A Real Time Social System, as of May 1, 1971, was his attack upon a slum landlord in New York which caused  the cancellation of his solo show at the Guggenheim and the firing of its curator. (Ten years later it went up at the Museum of Contemporary Art in New York.)

 
Powerful stuff, huh?

But back to D.C.'s Artschwager.  His mother studied at the Corcoran School of Art and helped develop her son's artistic interests, now associated with minimalism, pop and conceptual art.

He graduated from Cornell, married, and worked as a furniture salesman, then later a furniture designer.  Artschwager's future took a right turn after he received a commission from the Catholic Church in 1960 to "build portable altars for ships."  This production led to his use of wood and Formica to make small wall pieces and to larger objects.

Dijkstra is a photographer whose video, I See a Woman Crying (Weeping Woman), 2009, is based on Picasso's The Weeping Woman, 1937, which is not seen or labled in this piece.  Rather, Dijkstra's subject is Catholic school children who respond to Picasso's Woman on three screens. And it's on display in the West Building through Labor Day, September 2, 2013.   

Ed Ruscha, another artist associated with the Pop movement, says he was inspired by Jasper Johns, Arthur Dove, Marcel Duchamps, and John Everett Millais's Ophelia which, coincidentally, hangs in the Gallery's West Building through May 19, part of the enthralling Pre-Raphaelites exhibition.  (Don't miss it!)

The people wait for entry outside the West Building. The enlarged reproduction is John Everett Millais's Marianna, 1850-1851, one of the artists who inspired Ed Ruscha.  Many Millais paintings may be found in the West Building, part of the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition/Patricia Leslie 

Influenced by Hollywood films, Ruscha's art direction stems also from his training in commercial art, words and typography. His Words in Their Best Order, 2002, is a "site-specific" work of three panels, each 13 x 23 feet, found at the Gannett Building in Tysons Corner.

It's not easy to make out Ed Ruscha's Words in Their Best Order, 2002, at the Gannett Building at Tysons Corner, Virginia, but look closely (very closely) and the words may appear through the windows/Patricia Leslie

Ruscha has experimented with the use of gunpowder, vinyl, blood, red wine, fruit and vegetable juice, axle grease, chocolate syrup, tomato paste, bologna, cherry pie, coffee, caviar, daffodils, tulips, raw eggs and grass stains.

Would you not leap at an opportunity to meet these artists? I think I fell in love with Haacke, and I don't even know what he looks like, but what do looks matter when his art revolution can shut down an exhibition? He is the people's power Putin of the art world today. I wonder if he rides horses topless. 

Wikipedia quotes Ruscha: "Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head." After viewing these stimulations, you may not have any head hair left, but art is not a passive fancy, and aims to stimulate or please somebody, maybe, whether it's you or the artist. (Call me, maybe.)

What: Modern Art

When:  10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday - Saturday and 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sunday

Where: The East (Haacke, Ruscha) and West (Dijkstra), National Gallery of Art, between Third and Ninth streets, N.W., Washington, D.C.

How much:  Admission is always free at the National Gallery of Art

Metro stations:  Archives-Navy Memorial, Judiciary Square, the Smithsonian, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information:  202-737-4215

patricialesli@gmail.com

Crosses on the Mall

Crosses on the Mall April 12, 2013/Patricia Leslie

After a 24-hour vigil and the reading of victims' names, volunteers on Friday began removing from the National Mall, 3,300 crosses, Stars of David, and Islamic insignia, reminders of those killed by gun violence since the Newtown murders on December 14, 2012.

Crosses on the Mall April 12, 2013/Patricia Leslie

Groups which participated in the placement of the temporary grave markers on Thursday included the Sojourners,  Park View Kids Zone,  Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and PICO National Network (People Improving Communities through Organizing).

Crosses on the Mall April 12, 2013/Patricia Leslie

Their members were part of hundreds who converged on Capitol Hill to urge Congress to act to curb more gun deaths, and they made a difference:  16 Republican senators voted with 52 Democrats to continue the gun control debate, no small feat in times of heady money and influential lobbyists for the gun industry.

Crosses on the Mall April 12, 2013/Patricia Leslie

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Dear National Gallery of Art: 'Tear down this wall'

 

The wall which screens a trailer at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art.  To the left is the Washington Monument and hiding in the trees on the right is the dome of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, all on the National Mall/Patricia Leslie

 

You know I love you, National Gallery of Art, or I wouldn't bring this up, but that old rotting, wooden fence on 7th which I've thought for years was temporary, is, for years, still there. The one that screens the landscaping equipment. The one with the ripped, chipped, buckling and peeling paint. It shows wear and tear. 

The warped and dilapidated fence at 7th and Madison at the corner of the West Building at the National Gallery of Art is an eyesore. The promotion on the fence promotes the current Color, Line, Light exhibition.  Have the Dykes seen this fence? Maybe a benefactor would pay to uproot it/Patricia LeslieDavid-Apollo couldn't take the feeble fence any more, and he left/Patricia Leslie

David-Apollo's maker would not approve, and, after seeing their furnishings, it's inconceivable the Kaufmans (a must-see, in the West Building) would hang around digs like this, but they are still there, waiting, I suppose, like the rest of us for this canker to heal.

The "privacy fence" at the West Building at the National Gallery of Art/Patricia Leslie

Have the Kaufmans seen this fence? May I suggest a "Friends of the Fence at the National Gallery of Art" to take it down/Patricia Leslie

It is so out-of-character for you, National Gallery of Art, contrasted with the beauty and glamour of your distinguished buildings and their contents!  This fence does not flow here.  It would flow at a junkyard in West Virginia (please excuse me, West Virginians, but you know what I mean). I don't think zoning laws permit junkyards within the confines of the District of Columbia.

It may look like a modern piece of art, but it's the deteriorating fence at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art/Patricia Leslie

Patricia Leslie

Since you are getting a face-lift at the East Building, can the doctors come down and uplift the old fence right outa there?   

The fence at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art/Patricia Leslie

I am surprised the National Park Service has not complained.  Are trailer parks allowed in D.C.?  Ones that stand for years? Did you know the trailer and fence show up as out-buildings on Google maps?

From a distance, the trailer, the peeling paint and age of the fence are not noticeable, so please stand back and do not look closely.  This is not a work of art/Patricia Leslie

What about planting some trees or big bushes as a privacy hedge? Your landscaping team does a magnificent job, but the fence, I imagine, is out of their hands.  

Your beauty is impinged by this eyesore. It's like the Mona Lisa with a band-aid across the corner of her chin.  It's time for the masters to come in and do their thing.  Surgeon:  Please heal this scar!

With deepest affection,
Patricia

I ask you:  Which is more attractive?  Greens or peeling paint? The vehicles and equipment could be stored at the U.S. Capitol which is usually empty most months of the year/Patricia Leslie

 

Greens and pieces of the Earth are more attractive than the eyesore of a fence which has been standing for years at the West Building of the National Gallery of Art/Patricia Leslie

 

 

'Shock' art at the National Gallery of Art exits Sunday

Kim Rugg, No More Dry-Runs, 2008, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., gift of the Collectors Committee, 2009

 

This is one of those outstanding exhibitions that you want to remain permanent, so you can go by the National Gallery and study the pictures again and again, and uncover more intrigue upon every visit.

So much art and not enough time.  Folks, just one more day.

Shock of the News at the National Gallery of Art is absolutely must viewing for anyone remotely associated with news or art or history which pretty well includes everyone in Washington, D.C, or why are you here?

The power of art.

This show begins in 1909 with a front page story in Le Figaro by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet and playwright. "Le Futurisme" is about the birth of futurism, a column so audacious and inflammatory, it launched the movement, "shock of the news."

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Le Futurisme in Le Figaro, February 20, 1909, newspaper, collection Ohnesorge Martin-Malburet

About four years later, Pablo Picasso embedded a piece of newspaper in his collage, Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass, which, according to the event catalog, "was widely considered the first self-consciously modern work of art to incorporate real newsprint."

 

Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass,1912, Collection of the McNay Art Museum, bequest of Marion Koogler McNay

Subsequently, a new art forum was born which spread rapidly throughout Europe and to the U.S. It pierced cubism, Dadaism, and futurism, embracing artists like Man Ray, Georges Braque and Juan Gris.

The exhibition includes 65 paintings, sculpture, prints and other media, arranged chronologically and tracing the development over 100 years. (Interestingly, in the first gallery on the right wall, half of the pieces feature the word “glass” in their titles.)

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Said National Gallery Director Earl A. Powell III at the opening, the show shapes “our understanding of modern artists’ responses to the newspaper,” calling the presentation the first to offer an “examination of the newspaper as both a material and subject.”

The show is not newspaper design work, but artists' creations employing newspapers. (Overheard on steps to the Mezzanine: “What’s Shock of the News about?” Answer: “Oh, I saw it in Chicago. It’s comic strips.” Not!)

Many of the pieces make political statements, especially renderings made after World War II: Stalingrad, the German occupation of France, the Black Panthers, Sino-American relations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Berlin, Palestine, Patrice Lumumba and Moise Tshombe, and oh! Salvatore Dali. He devoted a newspaper to himself. Shocking. Who would have thought?

Salvadore Dali, Dali News, November 20, 1945, The Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, FL

In the third and last gallery is a work by Sarah Charlesworth reminiscent of the National Gallery's neighbor across Pennsylvania Avenue, the Newseum which features daily window displays of newspaper front pages. Ms. Charlesworth's Modern History: April 21, 1978 shows a portion of the front pages of 45 newspapers and treatment by their editors of a photograph of kidnapped former Italian prime minister, Aldo Moro, who was killed on May 9, 1978 by members of the paramilitary organization, the Red Brigades.

Sarah Charlesworth, Modern History, April 21, 1978, Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Justin Smith Purchase Fund, 2003

Kim Rugg in “No More Dry Ruins," (2008) cut out every letter from the August 8, 2008 edition of the Financial Times and rearranged them in alphabetical order (illustration at top).

Robert Gober redesigned a wedding page from a 1960 New York Times to include a small story about his own death by drowning at age 6. The article claims his mother was held for questioning.
Perhaps Gober's mother ignored child rearing to concentrate on her wedding business (if she had one) since another Gober piece (Newspaper, 1992) focuses on a photo of a bridal gown advertisement and Gober is the bride in wedding attire! Running on the same page is the story of a beating death of a youth by his mother.

Robert Gober, Newspaper, 1992, the artist and Matthews Marks Gallery

Still another article on Gober's Newspaper, 1992 page describes the Vatican's stance against gay rights which, according to the catalog, annoyed the Catholic Church when the work went up in 2000 at a San Francisco show.

Just before the exhibition's entrance, do not overlook, on the right, Mario Merz’s To Mallarme (2003) which is stacks of 2003 Italian and Arabic newspapers laid out over almost 24 feet with the words, in blue neon, translated from the French, “a throw of the dice never will abolish chance.”

This title comes from Stephane Mallarme’s 1897 poem, "Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard." The newpapers' publication dates coincide with George Bush's invasion of Iraq.

Some of the other artists represented in the exhibition are Robert Rauschenberg, Ellsworth Kelly, Jorge Macchi, Paul Sietsema,Paul Klee, Max Weber, the Guerilla Girls, Hannah Hoch, Joseph Beuys , Andy Warhol, Laurie Anderson, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, Semen Fridliand, and Paul Thek.

The catalog of 200+ pages has many color illustrations and provides rich background about the artists and their works. It was written by Judith Brodie, the National Gallery's curator and head of the department of modern prints and drawings, who spent five years developing the exhibition.

Hurry, before they disappear.

The exhibition was made possible by the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Foundation. The Corinne H. Buck Charitable Lead Trust helped with the publication of the catalog.

What: Shock of the News

When: Open daily from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Monday – Saturday, and 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sunday.

Where: East Building, National Gallery of Art, between Third and Fourth Streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W.

How much: No charge

For more information: (202) 737-4215

Metro stations: Judiciary Square, Navy Memorial-Archives, or the Smithsonian

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The U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, Washington, D.C.

The Capitol Christmas Tree from the White River National Forest in Colorado. The "People's Tree," an Engelmann spruce, was 74 years old and 73 feet high. If you look closely, you may be able to see what I think is Jupiter, about equidistant between the Capitol and the tree/patricia leslie

 

 

 

Colorado school children made more than 5,000 ornaments for the Capitol Christmas Tree and other Washington, D.C. sites. The tree's lights come on every day at dusk and are turned off at 11 p.m./patricia leslie

 

With backs to the Capitol and looking down the National Mall towards the Washington Monument or what looks like an upside down golf tee/patricia leslie

 

Hanging on the Capitol Christmas Tree is one of the ornaments made by Colorado school children/patricia leslie

 

The Washington Monument framed by the Capitol Christmas Tree.  The tree stands on the Capitol's West Lawn, below construction of the 2013 inaugural viewing stands at the Capitol. The U.S. Forest Service chooses a tree every year from one of our 155 national forests.

 

This year's tree traveled 5,000 miles from Colorado to Washington, stopping in 30 cities and towns for more people to enjoy. A song by Lindsay Lawler of Nashville, Standing Tall, was chosen from 300 entries as the Capitol Christmas Tree song, and the first Capitol tree art competition was won by Cheryl St. John of Colorado, for Awaiting Spring, which will be used on the cover of the CD featuring music for the trees. If no one is there, will they hear what we hear?/patricia leslie

 

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