National Postal Museum

Murtaza, Arefa, Aaliya and Saleem came to DC because Bhai Murtaza had a conference in DC. I joined Arefa and the kids to see the Postal Museum. 

The museum floor, on the lower level, has tiles that look like envelopes with a stamp in the corner. Such a smart design :)

Notice the Envelope-esque Tiles

We saw a mail wagon. These were used to deliver mail. As the train pulled up at stations of smaller towns, the train would not stop, just slow down. And, the mail bags would be flung on to the platform, while other bags full of mail for delivery were picked up with the train moving!

One of the exhibits at the museum is the PostSecret exhibit. In 2004 Frank Warren founded it. People mail in secrets on homemade postcards. This ventures has received hundreds of thousands of postcards. Some of them were displayed individually, some placed in a large pyramid, and most of them in storage. 

PostSecret Postcard Pyramid

One of the PostSecret Postcards 

A Heart Wrencihing PostSecret Postcard

There were a lot of interesting stamps and mail displayed at the museum . 

A Swedish Feather Letter

I enjoyed seeing stamps from Oman. 

There were a LOT of stamps from India, divided by state amongst other things. 

Sindh Dak Post: These stamps from the Sindh District were the first issued in India, and in Asia. The 1854 the Indian government recalled all unused stamps from Sindh, making the scarce today. The red stamp is also rare because the fragile wax caused many to fall apart. Sindh is now in Pakistan

Sindh Dak Post

The museums has interactive bits, where you can go through a whole bunch of stamps on a screen and email 10 to yourself. I did it, and here are the 10 I picked: 

They also let you design a stamp and email it to yourself, in two version - a current version, and a historic one. Here's the one I designed: 

Aaliya designed her stamp

"Botswana - The Last Sanctuary" at the NG Museum

I love going to the travel event at the NG museum. They are usually interesting, the food is always delicious, and drinks are flowing. All of this at the whopping cost of $0. I am so going to miss events like this in Eugene, and really, in any other place we live in, in times to come.  

Saurabh was travelling during this event, so Kristina and I did our monthly June date at this event. Unlike the Switzerland event we went to in April, this was excellent. We got there a few minutes early and went into the champagne reception. The cheese sticks, which I remembered from the Swiss event were just as yummy and we were able to enjoy 2-3 glasses of champagne before we headed to the auditorium for the main event.

Second glass, and loving it!

So, um, yeah, I leaned on that rod and it fell. We were headed to the Grosvenor Auditorium after the Champagne Reception. A couple had a good laugh at my expense.

Once everyone was seated, they had Batswana dancers enter from the doors and dance down the aisles to the stage, where they continued to perform. They were excellent! The rest of the event proceeded in typical fashion, with people from National Geographic and Bataswana delegates speaking about the country. I have been enamoured by the Okavango Delta for a while now, so it was fun to hear more about it. During this event, they introduced Dereck and Beverly Joubert, who were there! I was so excited. I first came across their work when a few years ago the NG museum did a Lions and Leopards exhibit, and all the photos and stories in that exhibit with theirs. Their story is amazing, and they do great work. 

Waiting for the main event to start

The Batswana Dancers coming in

Batswana Dancers

Okavango Delta

After the event, we filed back into the reception area, for more drinks and food. We ate, drank, talked, stood in line to take photos against a green screen, so it looked like we were near some wild animal. The Batswana dancers performed again, on the stage there, and I spotted the Jouberts again. I had 4-5 drinks in me at this point, and with inhibition tossed away, I was able to approach them, talk to them and IT WAS AMAZING!! I have never been able to do something like this. They are the nicest people, and talked to me at length, while I, likely, completely behaved like a fan girl (and had basically abandoned Kristina for the duration. Terrible!).

Reception Area

They had this deliciously flavoured lemonade, but I can't remember what fruit it was. Fail!

Green Screen Photo. Oh! Look! SPLASH! 

Batswana Dancers Performing at the Reception

I asked if I could take a photo with them, and they agreed. But, not only did they let me take the one photo, when I checked it, Dereck said, let's take another one! AAAAAH! <3 font="">

With Beverly and Dereck Joubert!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, it was an excellent excellent evening! And I was on such a high when we left. 

This might be my last event at the NG museum before we leave, and talk about ending with a bang! :) 

DC. DC. DC. Always surprising, Always amazing!!

Textile Museum

Having eaten lunch while looking at FISH slides, I made a quick visit to the Textile Museum on campus. I was only able to see some of the Migration exhibit that showcased quilts and other pieces on migration and immigration . Some of the pieces were simply gorgeous. 

I wasn't able to give the museum the time it deserved as I had to get back to work. I hope to have the chance to return before we leave DC. But, even if I don't, I am glad I got the see the few pieces I did and enjoy their beauty. 

I wouldn't have given this museum much consideration before. But, this brief visit definitely has me thinking otherwise. It is more an art museum than a museum telling me about the history of textiles. I did not expect that, and that's why I think it is definitely worth a visit. It's just tough picking which museum in DC to visit. There are too many, and most of them are just fantastic.

Cotton, Triangular Trade, 2015
-Susan Lenz
Artist Statement: 
"The need for slaves, crops, and manufactured goods displaced millions during the 16th through 19th centuries. Coming from South Carolina, I am very aware that the humble cotton boll represents this sad part of history."

This is the first piece I saw when I took the elevator up to the third floor. I have always loved how cotton bolls look. They look exactly like the cotton balls we use at home, but they are on a bush! :) Susan's display of this bolls hanging is alluring.

Cotton, Triangular Trade

Sedna's Tears, 2015
- Charlotte S. Bird
Artist Statement: 
"Sedna, sea goddess of the inuit, cries for the progressing diaspora of her people. She sees their houses fall into the ocean. They move their villages, but the ice goes north, making them traverse wider, rougher seas to hunt. Orcas invade and disperse their traditions prey. The white bear comes ashore, hungry. The brown bear and the advancing forest confront him."

I really liked three quilts depicting one piece of art and one story. The composition and execution could not have been easy. I also really like the scene.

Sedna's Tears

Implosion 4, 2015
-Beth Barron
Artist Statement: 
"This is the 4th in a series of mandalas. After literally being locked out of my home, I did not know where to go. Using found band aids, symbolic of wounding and resilience, I looked within to find the center (the heart) I had lost. I stitched together my life, a new story, a stronger map to lead me on my next journey towards home."

Implosion 4 is different and beautiful. It reminded me of the cross-section of a tree trunk.

Implosion 4

Mogadishu, 2012
- Nebo Laverncik

There is beauty in the frangibility of this piece.

Mogadishu

On the Path, 2015
- Daniela Tiger
Artist Statement: 
"My people have been forced to leave their ancestral homelands for as long as history has been recorded. Moving towards an uncertain destiny as the story is written, without more than crackers in their pockets. In my work, I am attempting to create a narrative of people on the move, some tired, some drained of all energy. And yet, some remain hopeful, searching into the horizon for sign of welcome. They are weary as they carry their earthly belongings, their children and their elderly, escaping oppression and seeking a new start. Without a clear sense of destination, they cling to each other and have faith that a new day will dawn. Today our people cling to an ancestral home ferociously, hoping that our past identity that has been synonymous with the Diaspora can turn into a new page of permanence." 

On the Path

Before I was leaving, I noticed these cards, where visitors could write their migration story. So, I did :)

Renwick Gallery

We left work early today, so we could go see the wonderful new exhibits at Renwick Gallery. They reopened recently, and have 6??? large art pieces. I had seen an article about it online and I really wanted to go check it out. 

As we got to the gallery we noticed the new neon signs. Why, on such a building would you put neon signs? It doesn't fit the area or the building or the kind of art inside. Terrible terrible decision. 

The work inside is excellent, however. 

Untitled, 2014

- Tara Donovan

"Employing mundane materials such as toothpicks, straws, Styrofoam cups, scotch tape, and index cards, Donovan gathers up the things we think we know, transforming the familiar into the unrecognizable through overwhelming accumulation. The resulting enigmatic landscape forces us to wonder just what it is we are looking at and how to respond. The mystery, and the potential for any material in her hands to capture it, prompts us to pay better attention to our surroundings, permitting the everyday to catch us up again."

A staff member took a kid behind a couple of the mountains to pose for a photo. Visitors aren't allowed to roam within the art work. He was pretty thrilled. The display is very cool, and amazing to think what people can do with everyday items.

Plexus A1, 2015

- Gabriel Dawe

"Dawe's architecturally scaled weavings are often mistaken for fleeting rays of light. It is an appropriate trick of the eye, as the artist was inspired to use thread in this fashion by memories of the sky above Mexico City and East Texas, his childhood and current homes, respectively. The material and vivid colors also recall the embroideries everywhere in production during Dawe's upbringing."

Dawe made thread look like a rainbow! What an excellent vision and execution of light, thread, colours. 

Shindig, 2015

- Patrick Dougherty

"Dougherty has crisscrossed the world weaving sticks into marvelous architectures. Each structure is unique, an improvised response to its surroundings, as reliant on the materials at hand s the artist's wishes: the branches tell him which way they want to bend. This give and take lends vitality to Dougherty's work, so that walls and spires are a record of gestures and wills. Finding the right sticks remains a constant challenge, and part of the adventure of the art-making sends him scouring over the forgotten corners of land where plants grow wild and full of possibility."

They look like giant weaver bird nests to me, which have always fascinated me. 

Middle Fork (Cascades), 2014

- John Grade 

"To commemorate the Renwick's opening, Grade selected a hemlock tree in Cascade Mountains east of Seattle that is approximately 150 years old - the same age as this building. His team created a full plaster cast of the tree (without harming it), then used the cast as a mold to build a new tree out of a half-million segments of reclaimed cedar. Hundreds of volunteers assisted Grade, hand carving each piece to match the contours of the original tree. After the exhibition closes, Middle Fork (Cascades) will be carried back to the hemlock's location and left on the forest floor, where it will gradually return to the earth."

This is such an amazing exhibit. To see the contours and size of this massive hemlock recreated in this painstaking and artistic way was a treat. I'm a little sad the art won't exist after its time at Renwick, but I love the idea of it being returned to the earth from its forest. 

Folding the Chesapeake, 2015

- Maya Lin

"Growing up in Ohio in the 1960s, Lin watched her father participate in the fledgling studio glass movement then gathering stream in nearby Toledo. The marbles used in this installation are the same industrial fiberglass product Henry Huan Lin and other glass-blowing pioneers experimented with then, where were soon abandoned by artists as technical knowledge matured. Folding the Chesapeake marks their first use by Maya Lin and a new chapter in her decades-long investigation of natural wonders. By shaping rivers, fields, canyons, and mountains with the museum, Lin shifts our attention to their outdoor counterparts, sharpening our focus on the need for their conservation."

The use of marbles to draw the map of the Chesapeake and the rivers/streams leading into it is a great idea and the execution was beautiful.

Anonymous Donor, 2015

- Chakaia Booker

"Booker was inspired to use tires as a material while walking the streets of New York in the 1980s, when retreads and melted pools of rubber from care tires littered the urban landscape. By massing, slashing, and reworking a material we see daily yet never fully consider, she jolts us out of complacency to grasp these materials for what they are: a natural resource marshaled through astonishingly complex channels into a product of great convenience and superabundance." 

In the Midnight Garden, 2015

- Jennifer Angus

"Angus's genius is the embrace of what is wholly natural, if unexpected. Yes, the insects are real, and no, she has not altered them except to position their wings and legs. The species in the gallery are not endangered, but in fact are quite abundant, primarily in Malaysia, Thailand, and Papua New Guinea, a corner of the world where Nature seems to play with greater freedom. The pink wash is derived from the cochineal insect living on cacti in Mexico, where it has long been prizes as the best source of the color red. By altering the context, in which we encounter such species, Angus startles us into recognition of what has always been part of our world."

The insects were beautifully displayed in this room, and the sheer number was fantastic. My favourite part was the little drawers full of insects that were set up with items. Of those, the one with the little teeny key hidden in a cut out book was my absolute favourite. Love little keys! :)

1.8, 2015

- Janet Echelman

"Echelman's woven sculpture corresponds to map of the energy released across the Pacific Ocean during the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, one of the most devastating natural disasters in recorded history. The event was so powerful it shifted the earth on its axis and shortened the day. March 11, 2011, by 1.8 millionths of a second, lending this work its title. Waves taller than the 100-foot length of this gallery ravaged the east coast of Japan, reminding us that what is wondrous can equally be dangerous."

We ended our visit at Renwick Gallery with this exhibit. This room was large, and the length of one side of the building. The floor is carpeted and visitors were sitting or lying on the carpet, looking up at these weaves that changes colour with time. It was mesmerizing and relaxing and a great way to end the visit.