National Portrait Gallery- My favorite thing in Washington D.C.

D.C is great. Once you get past the expensive lodging almost everything else is free. It is free to go to

the monuments. Believe it or not, it is free to go to the Smithsonian Museums. They are the largest museum complex in the world and house some of the world's most important treasures.  The American History Museum and the Natural History Museum are so large it would take three days in each just to see everything on display. The Air and Space Museum is one of the most visited museums in the world.

However, my favorite place in all of Washington D.C is the National Portrait Gallery. Essentially this is an art museum that is all portraits of famous American. The portraits are a who's who of American history. The portraits were painted by artists of their time and the subject of the paintings sat to be painted. When you think about it, you are just one step removed from these famous people with the artist being the link. When I see these paintings, I feel I am in the presence of greatness. To know that Washington, Lincoln, Poe, and Crockett all sat for these paintings and probably saw the finished product, for me is a connection to the past.

The National Portrait Gallery shares the building with the American Art Museum. So you would get two museums for the price of one, except both are FREE. The hours are 11:30- 7 pm. It is important to note the late closing, most D.C museums close at 5 pm, so with some planning, you can go to those earlier and spend time at the Portrait Gallery later. The NPG is not on the National Mall, it is five or six blocks north of it. Laurie and I walked from the American History Museum bus stop and it took a solid 15 minutes to get there. It was extremely hot when we went to the gallery, we spent the hottest part of the day in there for five hours. I'd guess the average tourist probably spends two hours but a real history buff with a camera could easily spend most of the day there.

The portraits are divided up into rooms like most art museums. The rooms have a central theme such as Early Americans, or Civil War generals. There is a Presidential Gallery with a portrait of each U.S. president. Portraits go up one year after a president has left office. Obama's portrait just went up recently. There were long lines to get a picture of it or with it, but the wait was never more than two minutes (each group only takes 5-10 seconds).

A couple of fun facts I heard while in there.

Bush Jr. and Obama are the only two presidential portraits to show their wedding ring
JFK is the only portrait done by a woman artist.
When JFK showed up for the sitting, he was wearing a running suit and sneakers, the artist couldn't have a portrait of a president in a running suit so she painted a button down shirt and a tie. 

President Obama's official portrait

Lincoln

Harry S. Truman

Dwight D. Eisenhower

U.S. Grant

Not a portrait, but a photo of the
Kennedy clan

Teddy Roosevelt

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Old Sport

Alexander Hamilton

Robert E. Lee

John Wesley Powell

Mark Twain

Nathaniel Hawthorne

By far my biggest hero when I was a kid
Davy Crockett
King of the wild frontier