Mr. Smithsonian Goes To Washington

Although I was in DC for work related reasons (an overall disappointing conference) I decided that during this visit to our nation's capital, I would visit some of the museums. Over the past few years I've been to Washington DC about 6 times and the only time I did anything somewhat tourist-y was the last time, and all I did was walk around The Mall. Anyway, I decided I wanted to check out the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. In some ways it reminded me of the Museum of Natural History in NYC, but in other ways not at all. Mainly, the entire place had a modern sheen that the NYC museum doesn't have. The stuffed animals actually looked like animals to me, unlike the one's in the NYC version. I think that a big part of it is that in NYC, the animals are placed in fake habitats that basically cancel out any form of realism once you've reached the age of eleven. In the Smithsonian, there was just a big stuffed grizzly bear in a plexiglass box. Also on display were the winners (and honorable mentions) in the Smithsonian's 3rd Annual Photo Contest (these were the ones in the "nature" category). This exhibit was awesome. I can't find this exhibit online, but you can see the finalists for the 4th annual contest here.
I also went to the National Gallery of Art after the throngs of school children drove me out of the Smithsonian. I loved this place. First of all, the architecture is awesome, with nods to places like the Prado in Madrid, Museu Nacional d' Art Catalunya in Barcelona, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other museums like it. It's cool because it has the only Da Vinci painting in the entire United States, as well as tons of paintings by El Greco, Cezanne, Lautrec, etc...