Best known for its portrait gallery of American presidents and the home to Gilbert Stuart’s unfinished painting of George Washington that became the likeness for the one dollar bill, it is the finest collection of classical and modern American portraits. To say that its art is an understatement, it is Read more
Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin Da Vinci, Medici, the National Gallery of Art is to Washington, D.C. What the Louvre is to Paris. Except it’s free and there isn’t a massive line to get in. It’s a democratically operated institution, unlike the capitalist enterprise from the so-called French Read more
Is a name that is needlessly long. It’s assumed that any museum of history in the capital would be a national museum about the country’s past. In its well laid-put galleries, American racial identity, industry, democracy, and culture are deconstructed. But the ugly truth that the Americans the museum serve Read more
I would have thought Chicago or New York would be the place for this, but turns out the National Building Museum lives on one side of Judiciary Square in Washington, D.C. Buildings are everything; we live, work, and rest in them. They’re all around us. America used to be the Read more
The museum is expensive and small for Washington, D.C. standards, but time your visit correctly and you’ll be able to participate in simulations that gives you a broader perspective on law enforcement training. Its location under the D.C. courts and opposite a memorial etched with the names of law enforcement Read more
There are four originals of the 1297 Magna Carta, one of them is in Washington, D.C.‘s National Archives. Entry is free but photography is prohibited. The modest downstairs gallery tells the troubled national history of how slaves built the Capitol and the White House, broken promises, the long-time disenfranchisement of Read more
This is the most child-friendly museum of the Smithsonians in Washington, D.C. If you don’t like having your seat kicked by a toddler on the bus, screaming babies on airplanes, or parents bringing tweens into bars then you will not like this place. The Smithsonian is a revered institution, but Read more
Washington, D.C.’s main monoliths of power, culture, and history all lie in an inverse T-shaped park stretching two miles from end to end. From the Lincoln Memorial in the west to the Capitol in the east to the White House in the north, this half-kilometre wide grassy avenue was the Read more
The fish ladder at the dam in Grand Rapids lets fish lie trout and salmon move upstream and bypass the dam. There are additional fish ladders in upstream dams so fish can spawn as they did thousands of years ago. The fish ladder was designed to allow fish through while Read more
Grand Rapids was my bonus level in Michigan. I had only planned to visit Flint, Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Lansing on the trip, but efficiency won the day. Former president Gerald Ford was born and grew up in Grand Rapids, his presidential library and grave site has price space on Read more