I can’t believe I’m now halfway through my USA museums odyssey.
Last week was mostly taken up by the VSA conference – I haven’t had a chance to really digest my key ‘take-homes’ yet, but as a way to organise my thoughts I’ve had a go at storifying it. Hopefully that will give a flavour of the conference and what was discussed.
After the conference I flew up to Washington DC to see as many museums and sites as I could. So far I’ve:
- visited the American History Museum and participated in a civil rights ‘sit in’ as part of a museum program
- taken Monuments by Moonlight tour
- spent a morning in the Holocaust Museum
- meandered in the subterranean labyrinth that joins the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the African Art Museum
- wandered through the National Museum of the American Indian
- raced through the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden before getting kicked out at closing time
- Visited the palatial National Gallery of Art
- Seen old-school displays alongside high-tech exhibits at the Natural History Museum
- Paid a visit to the space shuttle Discovery at the Udvar-Hazy Center
- Remembered my cover story throughout my visit to the International Spy Museum
And all that in the space of four days! Tomorrow I plan to finish of my DC adventures with a trip to the Newseum and a quick visit to the American Art Museum before heading up to Philadelphia to visit even more museums.
I’d hoped to blog about all this as I went, but my feet have scarcely touched the ground! Good thing I’ve taken hundreds of photos to jog my memory! It might take me a while to organise them all.