Museums and a day with Lizzy, Washington, D.C. January 22, 2018

  A wonderful day with a lot of walking.

  The drama in Washington today has to do with a government shut down that was being voted on in Congress. (They voted to keep the government funded for another 3 weeks - what a way to run a country.)

  We walked from our hotel to the Renwick Gallery, a Smithsonian museum of contemporary American craft, a museum we have never visited before. So glad that we visited as it was quite amazing. It is in a beautiful building, the first in the U.S. expressly built to be a museum.

We will definitely return.
  The special collection is "Murder is Her Hobby" about the work of Frances Glessner Lee, (1878-1962). She was interested in forensic pathology, but did not embark on a career until she was 52 after her brother's death and her inheritance which allowed her to develop her interest in how detectives should examine clues. She was friends with the chief medical examiner in Boston and she endowed Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine. In the 1940s and 50s she hosted semi-annual seminars in homicide investigation and presented the "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death," exquisitely constructed dioramas of actual crime scenes, complete with working windows and lights. Students had 90 minutes to examine the scenes. Some of her dioramas are still used today.

  Then we walked to the National Portrait Gallery to meet up with Lizzy S who is pursuing her M.A. at John Hopkins. As it is Restaurant Week, we walked to a fabulous Spanish restaurant, Jaleo. It was an amazing meal, complete with flan for dessert.
 

 Afterwards, the three of us strolled through the National Portrait Gallery, another museum we had never visited. It also warrants a return visit as it is very large.
 

One of the temporary exhibits was about Marlene Dietrich, focusing a lot on her work against fascism and her work entertaining the troops, as well as her influence on style and film. Another temporary exhibit was about American workers. Then, we went to Pain Quotidien for tea (and pastry). Then, we walked back home with Lizzy walking partway with us.
  We figure that it was a 5-6 mile walking day.