This article is part of FT Globetrotter\u2019s new <\/em>guide to Washington DC<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n The vibe in Washington keeps shifting with each administration, and the Smithsonian<\/a>\u2019s army of museums sometimes struggles to maintain its independence. But despite the controversies, the enduring miracle of the capital is just how dense it is with art \u2014 and, at a time of escalating ticket prices everywhere else, how many of its institutions are free.\u00a0<\/p>\n In one energetic morning on the Mall<\/a>, you can hop from vintage jets to Chinese scrolls, Lakota quilts, presidential portraits and old masters \u2014 and then return for more, day after day, all without spending a dime. This concentration of superb, mostly government-owned collections makes real the promise of a truly democratic American culture, and it gets me every time.<\/p>\n Here is a scavenger hunt of my top 10 artworks, rooms and quiet corners in DC, across its great museums.\u00a0<\/p>\n Note: we\u2019ve made a <\/em>Google Maps list<\/strong><\/em><\/a> of Ariella\u2019s favourite works. Save it for when you next need it. (On your phone, click \u201cSave list\u201d. You can access it anytime in the \u201cYou\u201d section in your Google Maps.)<\/em><\/p>\n Whenever I enter the Renaissance galleries of the capital\u2019s most encyclopedic art museum and find myself swarmed by Netherlandish nativities, glowing crucifixions and suffering saints, I always home in on the same small rectangle of concentrated splendour<\/a>. The material pleasures of the supernatural scene \u2014 the angel\u2019s jewels, rainbow wings and embossed velvet robes \u2014 ground the religious drama. There\u2019s something moving about the way the young Mary is jolted from the volume she\u2019s been reading. She yanks her hands from the stiff parchment pages as if the words had burned her fingers. It\u2019s not the book but the message brought by this fashionable angel that triggers so much bewilderment and joy, mixed with the intimation of future grief. West Building, Main Floor, Gallery 39. <\/em>Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> See Bellini\u2019s and Titian\u2019s joint fantasy of divine debauchery, \u201cThe Feast of the Gods\u201d<\/a> (1514 and 1529) \u2014 the Olympus dwellers drink, leer and get sloppy, their antics ennobled by bucolic woods. West Building, Main Floor, Gallery 17<\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Well away from the Mall, on a residential street near Dupont Circle, this townhouse museum reminds me that many art institutions begin with one person\u2019s private passion. I envy Duncan Phillips, who fell in love with Bonnard in 1924 (as I did many decades later) and had the chance to rake in 15 of his paintings. In this one<\/a>, I can sense the warmth of a summer afternoon in the shimmering trees and the sunlight hitting richly painted walls. I shiver at the hints of violent emotion in the lilac shadows. There\u2019s only the faintest figure in the bottom right corner, but the room brims with human feeling.\u00a0Goh Annex, Gallery 206. <\/em>Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> Don\u2019t miss Renoir\u2019s \u201cLuncheon of the Boating Party\u201d<\/a> (1880-81) \u2014 the dappled surface erupts with joy. You\u2019ll want to don your straw hat, grab a wine glass and pull up a chair.\u00a0Goh Annex, Gallery 201<\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n There\u2019s so much art concentrated in downtown DC that for a while after Glenstone reopened in 2018, I kept putting off the 40-minute hop to the Maryland suburb of Potomac. And then it was a thunderclap of spare elegance, an arrangement of concrete boxes in a 300-acre verdant estate. This intertwining of art and landscape recalls Naoshima Island<\/a> in Japan and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art<\/a> outside Copenhagen. Wander along the Woodland Trail and you\u2019ll encounter three seemingly abandoned cottages<\/a> hidden among the trees. In one, a giant clay boulder practically bursts out of its casing. The second contains a set of circular terraces receding like a stepwell into the wall. The third is a smooth-sided empty room. Goldsworthy\u2019s enigmatic trio doesn\u2019t offer or demand explanation: you just have to breathe in the spirit (and the earthy scent) that suffuses these rustic structures. Website<\/em><\/a>;\u00a0Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> See Robert Rauschenberg\u2019s \u201cGold Standard\u201d<\/em><\/a> (1964), a gilded Japanese folding screen adorned with paintings and eloquent detritus, including a leashed ceramic dog sitting on a bicycle seat and waiting patiently for something to happen.\u00a0Gallery Building<\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n I hate to admit it, but sublime art can spring from a petty personality. The great American expat JM Whistler was such an irascible troll that he titled his memoir The Gentle Art of Making Enemies<\/em>. The flamboyantly decorated Peacock Room<\/a> is a tribute to his talent for ditching friends and dissing patrons, and I\u2019m grateful for his bad behaviour. As the story goes, the shipping magnate FR Leyland asked Whistler to spiff up the dining room in his London townhouse, but the artist went overboard with his gold-and-blue aviary, causing a permanent rift. Eventually, the room found its way via Detroit to the Smithsonian, where I love to immerse myself in its decorative, decadent magnificence. Freer Gallery of Art, Gallery 12. <\/em>Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> See \u201cTrees\u201d<\/a>, the 17th-century folding screen by the Master of the I\u2019nen Seal \u2014 it\u2019s like taking a walk in the woods, if the sky were gold and every leaf and pine needle had a personality of its own. Freer Gallery of Art<\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n For an entire year, visitors to the compact and delightful Renwick Gallery will be greeted by a life-sized cow made of butter, a pyramid of more than 700 glass jars of preserves by the canning superstar Rod Zeitler and a pair of boots in size 96 made for \u201cBig Tex\u201d, a 55-foot walking cowboy statue. All of these unabashedly overgrown novelty items are part of State Fairs: Growing American Craft<\/em><\/a>, the latest show at the Smithsonian\u2019s dedicated craft museum, located in an extravagantly French-style mansion just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. It\u2019s a serious institution for fanciful and eclectic works, the sort of place I walk around in with a hushed chuckle.\u00a0Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> Look up at Leo Villareal\u2019s \u201cVolume\u201d<\/a> (2015), which hangs over the grand staircase. This chandelier does more than sparkle: a constantly changing pattern of LEDs ensures that you never see the same artwork twice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n In 1950, Hans Namuth photographed Jackson Pollock leaping, twisting, bending and tossing paint at a canvas he had stretched out on his studio floor on Long Island. According to legend, Pollock celebrated the completion of \u201cLavender Mist\u201d with his first shot of whiskey in two years. The photos cemented Pollock\u2019s fame at the very moment he began his downward slide. This masterpiece<\/a> dates from that shortlived creative apex. Even in the pristine environment of the National Gallery\u2019s East Building, the painting radiates the man\u2019s messy personality and intense physical presence: two sets of spectral handprints stain the upper corners. \u201cI don\u2019t paint nature, I am nature,\u201d Pollock insisted, and six years later he got his wish, crashing his car when he hurtled headfirst into a tree. East Building, Upper Level, Gallery 407-B.<\/em> Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> Look at it from the bus stop on Fourth Street. IM Pei\u2019s East Building can be a troublesome place to show art, but its sharp angles and marble facets make it a great civic sculpture.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n If it\u2019s a gloomy winter day on the Mall \u2014 or I\u2019m in a wintry mood \u2014 a stop in front of the euphoric, intensely polychromatic and cosmic canvases of Alma Thomas rarely fails to buoy my spirits. \u201cThrough colour,\u201d she wrote, \u201cI have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man\u2019s inhumanity to man.\u201d Thomas\u2019s story defies defeatism (a common ailment in the US capital). She fled the Jim Crow South for Washington DC in 1907, taught at middle-school level for 35 years and, despite suffering from arthritis and failing eyesight, went on to conduct a second career as a painter. Somehow, the more constrained she was by her body, the freer her painting became; the later, looser work is a lesson in purposeful joy. In 1972, she became the first Black woman to have a solo show at the Whitney, but even now the Smithsonian has only four of her works on view, scattered across several floors. Many more remain stashed in the vaults, waiting their turn to emerge into the artificial light. 1st Floor, 3rd Floor and Luce Foundation Centre. <\/em>Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> Edward Hopper\u2019s \u201cCape Cod Morning\u201d<\/a> (1950) is as tense and melancholy as Thomas\u2019s paintings are exuberant \u2014 I know that feeling of looking out the window, hoping that\u2019s not a calamity I see approaching.\u00a0First Floor, South Wing<\/em><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n This great concrete bagel of a museum appears to levitate, as if to show its neighbours on the Mall what a heavy building can achieve. In this case, I\u2019m choosing the building itself. Gordon Bunshaft designed the brutalist behemoth to house the collection of Joseph Hirshhorn, the mining tycoon and insatiable art consumer \u2014 it is a confluence of plutocratic largesse, architectural style and available land that\u2019s inconceivable today. Hirshhorn donated 6,000 modern paintings and sculptures to the federal government in 1966; at his death 15 years later, he doubled that trove. The museum hosts a quirky mix of temporary exhibitions (currently a solo exhibition for painter Adam Pendleton, and one that puts Basquiat\u2019s work next to Banksy\u2019s)\u00a0alongside its permanent collection. Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> The sculpture garden is embedded in the museum\u2019s identity, but it has been closed for renovations, so I\u2019m looking forward to the new version, reconceived by the Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto, which is due to open next year.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Piet Mondrian, that oh-so-imitable purveyor of toy-coloured grids, also had a fondness for decay. His wilted bloom<\/a> is startling in its vividness \u2014 you can practically inhale the floral stink \u2014 and in its expressively drooping glory. The Kreeger is a good place to ponder it. Aloof from the political vexations and tourist bustle of downtown, surrounded by the quasi-suburban greenery of Northwest Washington, it\u2019s an oasis of calm \u2014 but also a haven for turbulent imaginations. A cornucopia of works by Munch, Monet, Beckmann and Braque keeps things both lively and fierce.\u00a0Salon. <\/em>Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n A gown is like a ghost, a not-quite-living embodiment of a vanished spirit. At least that\u2019s what I see when I look at the exquisitely simple swath of bronze-coloured satin<\/a> that the great contralto Marian Anderson wore as a form of ceremonial armour. Whenever she appeared onstage, she carried the weight of history and the nation\u2019s obsessions with race on her exposed shoulders. But the dress also makes me think of one time she didn\u2019t<\/em> wear it: in her outrageously belated debut at the Metropolitan Opera, when she donned the costume of the fortune teller Ulrica in Verdi\u2019s Un Ballo in Maschera<\/em> and became the company\u2019s first Black singer in a major role.\u00a0Musical Crossroads Gallery. <\/em>Website<\/em><\/a>; <\/em>Directions<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n While you\u2019re here:<\/strong> Take a close look at the bronzed grillwork panels that screen the museum from the sun. The abstract patterns are derived from the carvings on a Yoruba column, and they give the museum its dark but vibrant presence among the Mall\u2019s collection of pale and stony buildings.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n You can explore more of our DC guide <\/em>here<\/em><\/a>, including Ed Luce on <\/em>where Maga power dines<\/em><\/a>. You may also like our <\/em>The National Gallery of Art to see \u2018The Annunciation\u2019 (1434-36) by Jan van Eyck <\/span><\/h3>\n
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The Phillips Collection to see \u2018The Open Window\u2019 (1921) by Pierre Bonnard <\/span><\/h3>\n
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Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland, to see \u2018Clay Houses\u2019 (2007) by Andy Goldsworthy<\/span><\/h3>\n
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The National Museum of Asian Art to see the Peacock Room (1876-77) by James McNeill Whistler<\/span><\/h3>\n
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The Renwick Gallery to see a giant cow made of butter (2025)<\/span><\/h3>\n
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The National Gallery of Art to see \u2018Number 1 1950 (Lavender Mist)\u2019 (1950) by Jackson Pollock<\/span><\/h3>\n
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The Smithsonian American Art Museum to see its four colour paintings (1970-1976)\u00a0\u200b\u200bby Alma Thomas <\/span><\/h3>\n
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The Hirshhorn Museum to see\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009the Hirshhorn Museum<\/span><\/h3>\n
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The Kreeger Museum to see Piet Mondrian\u2019s \u2018Dying Sunflower\u2019 (1908)<\/span><\/h3>\n
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<\/picture>The National Museum of African American Heritage and Culture to see Marian Anderson\u2019s concert dress (mid-20th century)<\/span><\/h3>\n
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