Works of Art

There are five Sweet Adelines choruses within 30 minutes of where we’re staying, and my plan has been to visit each of them while we are here. I decided to wait until after the first of the year as I figured they had all been busy with Christmas performances and festivities prior to that so this week I made my first visit to Chesapeake Harmony Chorus (http://www.chesapeakeharmony.com/). I visited this small chorus last year and was impressed with their sound and positive fun outlook, and that hasn’t changed. They are directed by Tancey Bosna, a long-time Sweet Adeline from whom the chorus gets their upbeat attitude. Tancey makes even the most mundane vocal exercise fun while still exacting the correct vocal technique and sound. This veteran director believes so much in this group of women that she drives nearly two hours each way every week from Philadelphia to lead them on their journey towards greatness. The week before a reporter from the Baltimore Sun had come to do an article on them, and did an awesome job capturing the essence of not only the chorus but of Sweet Adelines, too. (You can check it out at ChorusArticle.) We ran through several songs and worked on a new intro to their contest uptune. It was great to see the ladies again and have the chance to sing and learn along with them.

One place we had never visited in DC was The National Gallery of Art (http://www.nga.gov/). Though not part of the Smithsonian Institution, it is located on the National Mall and open to the public free of charge. It’s comprised of two buildings, the West Building opened in 1941 and the East Building opened in 1978. The Gallery was founded by Andrew W. Mellon who had donated his collection of art and sculptures to the United States upon his death in 1937, and over the years others have donated major works of art as well. The West Building houses a large collection of paintings and sculptures from the Renaissance period through the late 19th century, and this is where we began our visit. We had no idea how large and extensive the collection was and after two hours had seen most of what it had to offer but not quite all. The building is sectioned into a number of individual rooms, or galleries, each featuring various time periods and artists, and flow easily from one to the other. Walking down the center of the building you’ll find a couple of garden courtyards and the main rotunda, all beautifully decorated with marble, sculptures, plants, and flowers. The building itself is quite a work of art.












There are works from the great Masters housed here….Rembrandt, da Vinci, Raphael, El Greco, and many of whom we’d never heard. I was looking forward to seeing Rembrandt’s Self Portrait, but unfortunately it was on loan to a New York museum. However, below left is his Portrait of a Man in a Tall Hat painted in 1662, and below right is Raphael’s Bindo Altoviti painted in 1515. At the beginning of this paragraph is da Vinci’s Ginevra de’ Benci painted in the late 1400s, and the only one of his works known to be in the Western Hemisphere. One thing that truly amazed us as we wandered from room to room was the age of most of these works and how well they have been preserved.













Another impressive piece of artwork is the Shaw Memorial, which takes up almost the entire wall in its own gallery. Completed in 1900, it is a “golden full-scale plaster model of the bronze memorial erected in Boston to young Colonel [Robert Gould] Shaw and the African-American soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th Infantry Regiment.” The heroism of this regiment during the Civil War inspired the movie Glory, and the memorial commemorating their valiant efforts is not to be missed.

Evidently art students are allowed to work on their skills inside the museum. While we were there, we discovered three women in different rooms in varying stages of progress. As you can see, one was at the initial sketching stage, another was about halfway through her piece, while the last has nearly completed hers. What an incredible way to learn!










Before heading back to the car, we made a quick stop at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. We’ve been there before but just decided to spend a few minutes looking around some of the first floor. It’s such a fascinating place (one of our favorites), and one of the things located there is a full-scale mockup of the Hubble Space Telescope measuring 14 ft. wide x 42 ft. 4 in. tall…an impressive and amazing machine. We’ll be back to explore the NASM further on another day when we can spend several hours, which is what we always do. We never seem to tire of the exhibits.

The weather here has been up and down. We had snow again at the beginning of the week, a little more than the previous one, but was gone by the next morning so I didn’t get a picture. And then a couple of days later it was nearly 60 degrees! Then the rain came pretty steadily for several hours and created water puddles everywhere which the robins thought were great bird baths. However, the cold has returned this weekend with an expected low of 18 Sun. night…crazy weather!