Tourist Guide

When in D.C....

By Lisa Rauschart
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

What museum directors like best under their care
    Brent Glass well remembers his first sight of the American flag, the same one first seen by Francis Scott Key while watching the dawn break from the decks of a British ship. It was the 1950s, and Mr. Glass and his family had made their way down from Long Island for the standard monuments-and-museums tour of the nation's capital. "It's such an important part of our country's history at a point where our survival was really under siege," says Mr. Glass, who today directs the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
    Call it "the object of my affections." It's the piece that makes the heart beat a little faster and the head suspend reality for a moment or two.
    It's the painting or document that packs a powerful emotional punch far beyond the sum of its parts or its place in time. Can't decide where to go or what to see in Washington this summer? Why not start with what directors of the capital's cultural institutions from around the Mall and beyond consider their own very special objects?
    Of all the pieces in the Museum of American History (http://americanhistory.si.edu), the Star-Spangled Banner remains the director's favorite.
    "It's important on so many levels," Mr. Glass says. "The effort that has been made to preserve it over the years, the significant conservation recently, even how it has been displayed are all part of the story."
    At the National Archives of the United States (www.archives. gov) just up Constitution Avenue from the American history museum, archivist Allen Weinstein comes up with what, at first, seems a fairly obvious choice.
    "It's the Constitution," Mr. Weinstein says. "It's one of the great living documents in history, as relevant today as it was when first written."
    Mr. Weinstein's choice of the Constitution stems at least in part from the fact that the original document is displayed in a way that allows the viewer to see -- and scrutinize -- every handwritten page.
    "There's a lot to be learned by seeing the document in its original parchment," he says.
    In fact, much can be learned by moving through the whole room in which the Constitution is exhibited at the archives. Displayed alongside are other documents that paved the way for or descended from that seminal document.
    Across the Mall from the National Archives, the director of the National Air and Space Museum, Gen. John R. Dailey, has a hard time choosing from the assortment of planes and other objects at the museum (www.nasm.si.edu) related to the history of aviation.
    "Holy mackerel," says the general, who served 36 years in the Marine Corps and has charted more than 6,500 hours of flight time. "Every single piece here is based on some significance. If I had to pick one and say that was really it, it would be hard to do."
    One plane in particular has special resonance for him. It's a Boeing F4 B-4 constructed in 1934 and was flown by his father, himself a Marine Corps fighter pilot, when the family was based in Quantico, Va.
    Gen. Dailey likes things that fly fast, so he's also partial to the SR 71 Blackbird, built in 1970, which he flew during his own stint at NASA.
    "It's the world's fastest airplane," he says. "It can get from the West Coast to the East Coast in 64 minutes. That's two to 2.25 times faster than the bullet coming out of Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum."
    But it's not just about the speed.
    "It's manually operated," he says. "That's the charm. Its performance is based on the willingness to take risks. It's not some automatic thing where computers are doing everything."
    Over at the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov), Librarian of Congress James H. Billington picks an object related to a far earlier age of discovery.
    It's a large wall map made in 1507 by Martin Waldseemuller.
    "It's the first document of any kind that uses the name 'America' Mr. Billington says of the map, which was purchased in 1987 for $10 million. "It really is America's birth certificate."
    Mr. Billington notes that the map's depictions of the New World, especially the Pacific Coast, though distorted, are close enough to actual dimensions to reveal a familiarity with contours based on the experiences of Spanish and Portuguese explorers.
    The Library of Congress also has its own versions of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in an arrangement written by 20th-century composer Igor Stravinsky on the day he became an American citizen.
    Then there are the final paragraphs of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural speech, which the library possesses in manuscript.
    "It's the closest thing to biblical prophecy written by an American," Mr. Billington says.
    The Phillips Collection (www.phillipscollection.org) in Dupont Circle is tucked away among spacious mansions constructed during America's Gilded Age. The space was envisioned by Duncan Phillips as a showcase for his art collection, which included Pierre-Auguste Renoir's famous "Luncheon of the Boating Party." Yet even after various additions and renovations, there's a certain intimate, personal quality to the space that larger, more sprawling galleries don't have.
    So it's no surprise that Director Jay Gates chose a very small piece for his own favorite object. It's a work by French artist Edgar Degas titled "Melancholy."
    Just a little larger than 7 inches by 9 inches, it could be missed as you walk by -- but it has been catching Mr. Gates' eye for years.
    "It's always been a picture I've returned to again and again," he says. "There's a limited number of colors and a narrow range of colors and tone, but it delivers a powerful impact. It's very deeply felt. And it allows the viewer to engage the sitter in a very emotional way."
    A brisk walk away from the Phillips is the African American Civil War Memorial (www.afroamcivilwar.org). Its museum is located on Washington's bustling U Street Northwest, home to trendy boutiques and cafes and longtime neighborhood institutions such as the Lincoln Theatre and Ben's Chili Bowl.
    The museum hearkens to an earlier time, years before U Street was called the "Black Broadway" and Duke Ellington lived around the corner. Here you will find documents, images and other artifacts associated with the black troops of the Civil War, who constituted 10 percent of the Union Army when they enlisted after September 1862 and even more at war's end.
    "For years this story has been hidden," says museum Director Frank Smith, who first encountered the story of the Civil War's black troops when serving as a civil rights worker in Mississippi in the 1960s, "but it stands to reason that people would have been doing something to get their freedom."
    His chosen object is a before-and-after image of a man identified only as "Hubbard." It first appeared in Harper's Weekly during the war. In effect, it tells the story of a makeover, as a bent and tattered escapee is transformed into an upright soldier with uniform and rifle.
    "It's the one image that captures the whole story," Mr. Smith says. "It shows what people were willing to do to try to get their freedom."
    For Mr. Smith, the Civil War and even the changes on U Street these days are all part of an evolving America.
    "This country is coming to grips with what it means to be free," he says. "We're expanding the notion of freedom."
    There's also a Civil War presence at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center at the northern edge of the city (www.nmhm. washingtondc.museum).
    Here you can still see limbs severed during and after the crush of battle, sent by field surgeons to what was then the Army Medical Museum for further study. There also are considerably more modern items here, including the Visible Human Project, which enables visitors to examine cross sections of the human body at a computer station.
    There's also an interesting collection of items related to Lincoln's assassination, including the bullet that ended his life, the bloody cuffs from a surgeon who attended the autopsy, and bone fragments and hair from Lincoln's skull, which museum Director Adrianne Noe mentions as being of particular note.
    She first went through the museum as a youngster.
    "I remember going through the cases and really liking the microscopes," she says. "I decided at the age of 6 that I would one day work in a museum."
    Now as then, she's drawn to the microscopes. Her favorite is a wood, leather and gold model made in the 17th century for famed English natural philosopher Robert Hooke. It was used in the preparation of "Micrographia," one of the first treatises about observations made through a microscope.
    "It was among the largest of its time and just spectacular," Ms. Noe says, noting that the use of the microscope focused scientific activity on the individual as well as the object being viewed. "It really signaled a change in the nature of science."
    Can't get to the museum? Many institutions have an online component enable you to view the director's favorite piece -- and many others -- "up close and personal" in high-resolution images on the Web.