Quiz Answers For My National Mall Visit

First off, a huge thanks to everyone who participated. I've been trying to come up with prizes, and I think I have it: Everyone who responded can choose one photo off this blog and I will print it out in any size up to 8x10 and mail it to them as a thank you.

1. B I headed first to the National Museum of the American Indian.
Why? Because I had already been to the Museum of Natural History many years ago as a kid, and other museums like it in the world, but I have never visited a museum about Native Americans and I've always been very, very interested in Native American cultures, ever since I can remember. I grew up wishing I was Native American-- I think because I loved spending time outside so much and had a deep love of the land and wildlife. So I knew if I saw nothing else, I really wanted to see this museum.

2. A The National Gallery of Art.
I really truly do love artwork. But this also had to do with the fact that that I dislike crowds and it was by far the emptiest of the three museums I visited. Also, the National Museum of the American Indian was a bit of a disappointment. The first two floors were literally gift shops, though the third floor did have an interesting exhibit called "Identity by Design: Tradition, Change and Celebration in Native Women's Dresses." The most moving part of the exhibit were the Ghost Dance dresses. The Ghost Dance was part of the belief, expressed by Wovoka, that there would be a return to the native ways. Although a peaceful movement, many of the followers and Sitting Bull were massacred at Wounded Knee and so seeing these dresses was a sad reminder of that violence.

The Museum of Natural History was too crowded to enjoy so I just saw the mammal exhibit-- because it was Eagle Eye's favorite, and an exhibit on DC birds in the basement, which was less packed with people. The DC bird exhibit was a few glass cases of stuffed birds. I did get to see a stuffed yellow billed cuckoo (apparently there is also a black billed cuckoo that migrates through the area). Interestingly, the yellow billed cuckoo was next to the Carolina parakeet and passenger pigeon, two extinct species. I have always been interested in the Carolina parakeet because as an imaginative child I spent hundreds of hours outside in the woods around my house searching for it, thinking how cool it would be to re-discover it, wishing it not extinct, hoping against hope it survived.

3. B Dutch Cabinet Galleries.
When I was a teenager, I lived for a year in the Netherlands, and I grew to love Rembrandt, so a chance to see roomfuls of Rembrandts was a real treat for me and in a way transported me back to that pivotal time in my life. I also got to see a Hieronymus Bosch (though not one of the more detailed or larger ones), and paintings by Johannes Vermeer, Anthony van Dyck and Pieter de Hooch. I think my favorite piece, in the spirit of Hieronymus Bosch, was "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" by a follower of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

I actually don't care the much for the Impressionists, and though the exhibit by Richard Misrach looked promising, and I really like photography, I didn't have enough time to check it out.