D.C. art galleries: 3/27/26

Hi, welcome to Math and Musings.

I'm Michael Connell, creator of Math and Musings, and your host.

Stay tuned for 15 minutes of science, politics, news, and opinion.

In other words, Math and Musings.

Today's date is Friday, March 27th, 2026.

This is season 6 episode number 13 of our show.

I do have my son with me here today, Frank, and how are you?

Good.

Good. I am glad to hear it.

You know, I'm looking at the date.

It is 327.

That is a pleasing date to me.

I like 327s.

3 cubed is 27.

I am looking at the episode number 13 that is half of the year, 26, and also I should

mention that it is the last day of school today, before spring break, it is this air.

We are off a little bit.

As we record this, you are on a four-day weekend.

I don't know how you manage this one, I don't know what kind of holidays we got going

on here, various religions that I don't celebrate.

You never go to school.

I don't know how these things work, but it is less than half, less than 50% of the year.

I do appreciate that we have time to do this.

I do enjoy working on my hobby, shouldn't say working on my hobby, I am hobbying it at my

hobby.

Anyway, I will let you in a secret.

Now that you and your friends are going to be off the wall today, as always, is day before

a long vacation.

I can tell you though that the teachers are way more excited than the kids are today.

As we always are for these things, snow days, days before vacation, summer break, teachers

are always way more excited than the kids.

Speaking of exciting, you and I have been doing some exciting things, spending our weekends

wisely here.

It is springtime in DC.

I forget that this is a tourist destination.

People come here to visit us.

Every once in a while I remember all I got to do is to travel a few miles down the road

from my home.

Here I am in the national capital, home of all kinds of interesting things, many of which

are free.

By the way, most of the monuments and museums in such here in DC, overpriced lunches and

going through the gift shop, I understand how these things go.

You have figured out that it is not really free because even if you take the metro, which

is our train system here, it is like, well, it is costing you something, if your drive

is going to cost you something to park, but nothing is free in this world.

Glad you have picked up on that.

The price to the consumer, excuse me, the price to the consumer, walking in the museums

is zero.

Doing some domestic tourism around here, when you and I hit up a couple of galleries with

your mother and they are related.

They are all falling under the umbrella of the Smithsonian Art Museums.

We started off at the Renwick Gallery.

The Renwick Gallery has a new exhibit.

I was so excited to see this.

It is an exhibit based on state fairs, which like state fairs are fun anyway and then

they are bringing all the state fairs to me at the historic Renwick Gallery.

You know about the history of the Renwick Gallery building?

I will tell you a little bit about it.

Name for its architect, James Renwick Jr., the Renwick Gallery building, originally built

to be Washington DC's first art museum into house William Wilson Corcoran's collection

of American and European art.

I guess Mr. Corcoran had a big one.

Renwick was designed by Renwick completed in 1874.

It is located at 1661 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Does that address mean anything to you?

It is, you know, who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Well, a family lives there and then a lot of people work there too, it is this place called

the White House.

Oh, I think I were in that place too.

You have, yeah, you are aware you have seen it.

Renwick, they say, designed it after in addition to the Louvre, at the time of its construction

it was known as the American Louvre.

Building was near completion when the Civil War broke out, was seized by the US Army in 1861

as a temporary military warehouse.

And then in 1864, General Montgomery C, is it Mike's, Migs, Migs, converted, I should

have looked that up first.

Well, usually the name looks German, usually you pronounce the second vowel and you have

two vowels in a row.

But when it's your name, you can say it however you want.

Under the building to his headquarters office, and then in 1969 the building was returned

to Corcoran, Corcoran Gallery of our Open the Public, quickly out of the space, relocated

to a new building in 1897.

We are at the famous Renwick building, seeing the State Fair exhibit.

This is just beyond pop art or camp or kish.

It was, you know, your usual array of farming equipment and other State Fair stuff.

But they had to like turn it to art exhibits.

So did you have Franklin a favorite one that you were seeing, oh favorite exhibit as you

were there.

There were some, there were some good ones.

There was, you didn't like the main hall, we thought it was palm trees.

It was not palm trees, it was, it was actually what?

It was corn.

It was corn.

Yeah.

And that one, it was, it was corn.

It's the Justin Favila Kapia de Maze, amazing, I know it was corn.

Maze, yeah.

Yeah, that one's, that one's corn.

And a huge installation, it's like the size of a gymnasium and they have giant corn

and it was like, the lights would change, it was totally immersive experience that you

were experienced like daytime, nighttime, like you wouldn't in a storm, like you're out

in a corn field, but this stuff was made out of like, go at her.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was like piñata.

It was amazing.

Yeah.

It had a piñata vibes.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

There were also some corn dogs.

You remember the corn dogs?

Corn dog base.

The corn dog base.

It was like a cornucopia of, it was, yeah, it was like a, imagine like a bouquet of flowers

except it was corn dogs.

It was very, very, very, very state fair, yeah.

And then the, oh, oh, the ceramic hot dog.

Yeah, which, it wasn't new, it was like, from the 1960s, I think, I think Andy Warhol,

it wasn't a Warhol, but it was like one of his contemporaries had put together the,

the ceramic hot dog and, yeah, it was fantastic and then as you would see it, stay fair, a giant

butter sculpture in the shape of a cow, which I, I, I, that tracks, that was pretty impressive.

It was all of my life, my second favorite.

What was your favorite?

The paramet.

The paramet.

I don't know if they officially call it the paramet, you did.

I think it just called the paramet.

Okay, there was a ceramic pair.

I think I could show this on the own.

Oh, I'll never be able to find it, but like 100 times the size of a regular pair.

And again, I don't want to like struggle, struggle through this as people are listening to

this live.

Okay.

It's all man-friendly with technology here, that it was like jars of pickled jellies and

jams and spices and such, arranged in an artistic way topped off by a giant ceramic

probably pair.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it, but then you see, and it's what, like 20 feet tall,

I guess I should lead with the fact that it's way more than a life size.

A couple of hundred jars of jelly on the thing.

It was incredible.

They had, speaking things that are incredible, like seed art, how would you explain seed

art?

It's like crop art?

Crop art.

Yeah, I mean, imagine taking various seeds of different colors and sizes and arranging

them into something that looks like a portrait, you know, as like someone's face, but you've

made it out of seeds.

It's incredible.

I can never do this in a million years.

And then I love the, okay, I'm just going to call it the butter dress.

It was like boxes of butter, like your classic, like, landlakes and other such things butter,

and they were cut up and then fashioned into a dress.

I guess this was at the Minnesota State Fair because they had had so many, like, regional

butteries there.

And what do we call them?

It was unusual, but it wasn't weird.

No, it wasn't gratuitous either.

And I appreciated everything about it.

That to me was the most interesting thing because I hadn't seen that online, I hadn't

had time.

And then you usually, you know, woven things and blankets and athletes and saddles and costumes.

They had like a rhinestone cowboy costume, a giant bull, like, for the state of Texas.

Like a 20-foot tall ceramic or something boot, like the world's largest boot.

I'm standing next to the world's largest boot shirt.

Does it include the world's largest guy or like the world's largest?

What I saw was a very large boot, I'm not sure if it's the largest, but I did appreciate

seeing it.

And then, yeah, so 10 out of 10 would recommend.

They have their usual array of items there as well.

It's all very impressive at the Renwood Gallery, but the rotating section as the state

fairies of it now, that we also went to the National Portrait Gallery, which is also

part of the umbrellas.

It falls under the Smithsonian Art Museum, American Art Museum umbrella, which is part of

the Smithsonian Institution, I suppose, according to the interwebs.

This has founded in 1962 and opened in 1968, National Portrait Gallery.

They've got like all-timey movie stars, the portraits of like 1930s and 40s movie stars

they've got now, and up on the second floor, I guess.

These were moved because part of it's under construction.

Now my two favorite things in the world are sports and music, and they have athletes

and musicians on display, they're portraits, they're a great one of Carlton Fisk, everyone's

a fan of Carlton Fisk, and seeing him, they have like a bust of Yogi Berra.

And then, so this was like, it was in a different area, but I appreciate seeing it.

It was the American winners, exhibit, now did you have a favorite portrait?

Did you have a winner?

Did you have a winner up there?

No.

How about among the presidents?

Because they have every president listed.

The Obama ones.

The impossible to be.

Yeah, the Obama ones.

I mean, you look at all the 18th, 19th centuries, Presonagus, there's only one in the 18th

century.

19th century Presonagus, they're all the same sort of thing, you know, old white guys painted.

And then the newer ones, yeah, they're a little bit more unusual, and then the one with

Obama, now like regardless of how you feel politically, that the portrait of a little

Obama is stunning, and he's on a green leafy background, which again, it doesn't make

any sense until you see it, and you go, my goodness, this is amazing, I love this.

And it's like, why can't I get myself on a leafy green background?

There should be like one of those, like, draw yourself in.

Is there an app for that?

Yeah.

I mean, there is, but there should be, but that's specifically like, draw yourself in

this.

And draw yourself as Obama.

That could be-

Actually, most of the paintings look like that one right there.

That you're looking at here, an old guy with this guy, he's got the white hair in the

mustache.

That is Mr. Andrew Mellon, whose art collection was one of the foundations of the natural

portrait gallery collections.

Yeah, sitting there, actually.

He's just sitting, because he had to sit for a long time, like-

And then also, like, what would you tell a painter, like, oh, yes, I want to be in a flower

thing, you would be like, yeah, but you're not in flowers right now.

That many flowers, like, give me an idea here.

And then the portrait gallery is sort of connected to the Smithsonian, the American Art Museum,

which is also related to the Rennwick, it's all part of the same sort of collective.

I'm reading this from the interwebs again.

The one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art made in the United States

from the colonial period to the present.

More than 7,000 artists are represented in the museum's collection.

Most exhibits are held in the museum's main building, the old patent office building,

which is shared with the national portrait gallery.

While craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Rennwick gallery, okay.

That makes sense.

And-

Oh, yeah.

That's the one.

There's two I'm going to mention.

And, well, really, the courtyard between the buildings, and it used to be open, and it

was like one of the largest open spaces in buildings, at least in America, anyway, the

co-good courtyard.

I had some delicious hot chocolate there.

Well, you had it, and I stole some sips of yours.

May I level?

Yeah.

It was amazing.

Your mother paid for it, I'm sure it was like $14, or so much for her free-chipped

in the museum.

And then, to those two, the one they've got, the Grandma Moses exhibit now, and I love

the Grandma Moses style.

That, well, she's prolific, first of all, because she painted until she was about 150.

She might still be painting somewhere, for all I know.

And that, yeah, so she didn't go to a fancy art school, or it's not, quote-unquote, like

high art, like, no, I like beautiful landscapes of pastoral images.

Yeah, it looks good.

I don't care who painted it, like, it looks good, or it doesn't look good.

I'm not an art historian, I just look at it and go, this looks good, or this doesn't

look good.

Or is, I like looking at it, like, I like looking at Norman Rockwells, too.

So I appreciated seeing that, and then the television thing, what do they even call

that one?

It is, it's like a picture of America, a giant map of America.

It's probably something called something like America, or America.

It is, though, it is a, what do you even call it, like, you're seeing TV, and it's neon,

and I can't locate the name of it.

I'm sure if I Googled it, it would take me about three seconds, but it's more fun to

just try to describe it.

And really, more in the description, you just gotta see it.

Like, you gotta see a butter sculpture.

So Frank, and you're wondering what I could possibly pull out of this drawer that would

be related to it.

I made a butter sculpture for you.

Now, the thing is, I did not make it into a shape of a cow.

I made it into a shape of a rectangle, and I placed it on this stuff called bread.

So you may have this, my, my buttered bread, and, yeah, that's pretty good, that's a good

combo.

Some, yeah, they are a cellist, bread and butter, it's pretty good.

It goes together like bread and butter.

It goes together like bread and butter.

I particularly liked the, this shaping I did on this.

Well, I shouldn't say it's a rectangle, it's three-dimensional.

So it's actually a rectangular prism.

That quick, I tried to shape it into a cow, you know, it's trickier than it looks.

But this one we could eat, and it tastes pretty good.

Now, I pre-staged being on the show day.

I eat it out, but I suppose we're good enough to go too.

It was worth going too many times over.

I pre-staged being on the show today.

We've been listening to Matthew Musings, my name is Michael Connell, more information

to contact you at michaelconnelljr.com.