I didn't get too much painting done this visit, because I had to go see the newly opened East Wing of the National Gallery. More on that later in the post.
Walking to the Gallery in the morning, I had to take this picture of the Calder stabile outside the 7th street entrance. It just seemed to be striding along...
I worked mainly on the bottom half today, trying to get the color and value of the box right, and working on the white paper with the gray picture of a town. I'm just going to post these two photos I took of my copy at the end of the day, because I really didn't do much to it after lunch. This was because after my lunch break, I went straight over to the East Wing to check it out... here are just a few highlights:
The entrance to the Modern Art galleries
The new Calder gallery
The rooftop gallery, with the blue chicken and other cool things
The Rothko room
A view down one of the Tower staircases
I took many pictures, but most not good enough to post online. I wandered through the East Wing, up and down the staircases, and more than once found myself coming out into the main area completely disoriented as to where I was in the building. They have added over 12,500 square feet of gallery space with this renovation, which took around 3 years to complete. They have incorporated a vast amount of art from their acquisition of the Corcoran's collection, and have rearranged part of the American Art collection in the West building and moved some of that art over to the East building. The way the art was curated and hung was quite striking. I saw a Cézanne still life hung next to a Picasso next to another Cubist, each having been influenced by the one before. Whole large rooms dedicated to different movements of the 20th century. Juxtapositions and contrasts. I could spend a couple of hours a day over there.
Any of my friends who come visit, I will take you there!!! Schedule your visit now!
