Ocean Hall, Animal Skeletons, Ruby Slippers, and Grace Coolidge

Since the government did not shut down on Friday night, it meant that not only would I be going to work on Monday, but that my plan to go to the Smithsonian Natural History and American History museum was a go. I headed to the Metro station at about 9:45 which put me on the Mall a little after 10:30. I went first to the Natural History museum which is chock full of cool stuff. I went through the Geology, Gems & Minerals exhibit first which features volcanoes, rock formation, meteorites, a piece of Mars (which I touched), re-creation of mines, and various gems, including the Hope diamond which, it goes without saying is huge. It was start to get a little crowded of eighth-grader, families with strollers, and what seemed like every single high school senior class in the great DC area so I looked for a less popular exhibit to got through next. And I found it in the special exhibit of artifacts from Cypress which led to a small exhibit hall full of beautiful pottery from Korea. From there I went to the exhibit titled "Bones" which was an exhibit featuring reconstructed skeletons of probably 150 different animals including sea turtles, deer, bushbaby, various species of mice, toads, shrews, voles, moles, sea lampreys, crocodiles, storks, ducks, skinks, skunks, snakes, and even a small grey whale. Suffice to say this was probably my favorite exhibit mostly because I recognized some of the skeletons and I appreciated the amount of time it took to assemble each skeleton. Plus there were short discussions of skeletal development across the different species. I walked through the sneak peak of the upcoming exhibit about Egyptian mummies before going through the Insect Zoo (and reminding myself that centipedes still give me the hebby-joe-jebbies) before heading to Ocean Hall which features models of various marine life. Then it was on to the Mammal Hall before (again) getting annoyed with the huge mass of people and heading downstairs to the Birds of DC exhibit which was (shockingly) not very crowded and (not shockingly) full of various birds native to DC (including one of my favorite birds, the Red-Winged Blackbird). It was around noon, so I walked over to the American History museum, got and map, and when to the cafe for a bit to eat and plan out the order of my visit in the museum. The first exhibit I went through was called Invention at Play which was a mix of toys that focus on inventing as well as inventors taking about what toys they like to play with when they were younger (there were a lot of mentions of Legos!). Then I went through Julia Child's kitchen which was so amazing. They literally made her kitchen into a museum exhibit complete with her books (including 2 copies of the Joy of Cooking), her KitchenAid Mixer (in Cobalt Blue) right down to the magnets on her fridge (including a Magnet from King Arthur Flours!). I really enjoyed the part about the marriage between Julia and Paul. The amount of support Paul gave Julia throughout her work was amazing, it's clear that her cookbooks are a labor of love of the both of them. From there I went through Science in American Life which was full of all sorts of interesting artifacts of recent life in America including early modern lab equipment, examining the increasing popularity of various plastics in post-war life, an exhibit on the development of the birth-control pill, and life in modern cities. Then I went to the exhibit on Paper engineering which was all about pop-up books and the various types of pop-ups used, there are some amazing examples in the exhibit. And all this was only on the West part of the first floor! On the East part of the first floor, I walked through an exhibit about America and the rise of the automobile and highway system which featured lots of different cars and trains (and even a horse-drawn wagon) before heading to an exhibit that focused on American maritime pursuits. I then went to the 3rd floor to see the objects from 1939 (including Charlie McCarthy and the Ruby Slippers), Treasure of Pop Culture (which includes Kermit T. Frog and the Catsuit from Batman), and the musical instrument collection. The collection isn't very big, probably around 40 instruments, but they do have a Stradivarius quartet that are absolutely gorgeous and this amazing guitar that comes with a special case. For there I went through exhibits about Abraham Lincoln (crowded but interesting and had clothes from the Lincolns), American Presidency (which was split up into different aspects of the presidency from being commander-in-chief to the president in popular culture), and one about all wars with American involvement (the posters from World War II were my favorite but the section about World War I was surprisingly short). Then I headed to the exhibit that contains the flag that inspired the Star Spangled banner. The flag is huge with 15 stars and 15 stripes, with 1 star cut out of the flag as a souvenir (which was actually done really early in its history, there was a picture of it at the White House during the turn of the 20th century and the star is missing). The flag is stored under low light and so it gives the flag this ethereal quality because it looks like it glows. The last exhibit I went through was The First Ladies of the Smithsonian which features gowns, pictures, and stories about the First Ladies. The Inauguration gowns of recent first ladies are on permanent display (back to Mamie Eisenhower) while clothes belonging to older First Ladies are in rotation to decrease wear on the gowns (also sketches of most of gowns were displayed. The exhibit was really crowded but totally worth it because you could really see changes in fashion based on the gowns of the women. One of my two favorite were Grace Coolidge because she thoroughly embraced the flapper fashion, her Inauguration gown was a red flapper gown (not on display, just a sketch but there was another gown of hers that was a black lace flapper dress). Here is a picture of her evening dress:

My other favorite was Mamie Eisenhower mostly because I was surprised by her gowns. You don't really hear about the fashions of Mamie Eisenhower but her dresses were really beautiful; her Inauguration Gown was pink with rhinestones and her other gown on display was really beautiful red evening gown:


After that, I headed back to the Metro and back home. Again I took lots of pictures, which you can see here (and captioned this time!)