This weekend was the annual free Museum Walk in the beautiful Dupont-Kalorama neighbourhoods of DC. The festival is sponsored by the Dupont-Kalorama Museums Consortium (DKMC) to promote these “off the Mall” museums. Of the 7 unique museums I was able to visit 4. At each site, there were tours, hands-on activities, and music.
Dupont Circle and the adjacent Kalorama (Greek: beautiful view) neighbourhood are known for splendid homes and embassies of great architectural diversities. Five United States presidents made their home here – Franklin Roosevelt, William Taft, Warren Harden, Herbert Hoover and Woodrow Wilson. Now President Barack Obama will be the sixth to make his home here too, even if it is to be for just a few years.
Anderson House
The American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati
The Anderson House is a National Historic Landmark built in 1905 for Larz and Isabel Anderson, wealthy philanthropists whose interests included collecting art and entertaining guests. It is now the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati.
The Phillips Collection
The Phillips Collection is a museum of modern and contemporary art opened in 1921 by Duncan Phillips in honour of his father. It’s most famous for holding Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. Their current exhibition is a 40 year retrospective on the works of the American artist William Merritt Chase who died a century ago. This is it’s opening weekend. There was jazz to be enjoyed as well as a prelude to the DC Jazz Festival that starts next week.
Heurich House Museum
This fireproof mansion was built in the 1890s by DC’s most successful brewer, the German immigrant Christian Heurich. He ran the city’s longest-operating brewery until his death at age 102.
The President Woodrow Wilson House
This authentically furnished home of former President Woodrow Wilson displays gifts of state from around the world as well as personal items. It serves as a living textbook of “modern” American life in the 1920s.
I’ll be sure to revisit these as well as the others in the future.
A lover of mangoes. A woman - smart, without pretense, lefthanded, Afropolitan - navigating this thing called life. An unapologetic believer in social justice and karma. Choosing to radiate positive energy and be true to myself. Here, my musings.
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