Get a closeup of the National Portrait Gallery during its Docent's Choice Tours
Friday, January 8, 2010
Museums can be overwhelming: They're crowded. They're big. And they're chock-full of stuff. Where do you even begin?
This weekend, begin with a tour of the National Portrait Gallery.
"If you like history and biography, this is the museum for you," said Liane Lunden, an extremely knowledgeable docent of 15 years. "My purpose," she continued, "is to whet your appetite [so you] become as enchanted with this place as I am."
The tour, called "Docent's Choice Tour," is more of a history lesson than an aesthetic one. We learned about Alexander Hamilton, Lunden's favorite historical figure. ("His life reads like an adventure story," she said.) We learned about Belva Ann Lockwood, a woman who twice ran for president in the 19th century. (She got 4,000 votes in 1884, Lunden told us.) We learned about Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852. (Her publisher thought she would sell 10,000 books the first year. She sold 300,000, Lunden said.)
Lunden encouraged everyone to take a second look at the paintings and try to figure out what they say about their subjects. Looking at a self-portrait of John Singleton Copley, an 18th-century American painter who spent time in England and Italy, Lunden thought he looked "heartsick. Maybe he wants to be back home." Of Cecilia Beaux's self-portrait, she noted, "She's part of the woodwork. . . . She's just a servant of her art." She compared Edgar Degas's portrait of Mary Cassatt with Cassatt's self-portrait, which depicts a younger, softer Cassatt. "Try to find the story behind the picture," Lunden said.
Upstairs, we saw a few presidents' portraits, including the famous George Washington by Gilbert Stuart and Alexander Gardner's April 10, 1865, photograph of Abraham Lincoln that is said to have foreshadowed the president's death. (Gardner broke the glass negative, and so a line runs through Lincoln's head in the photo. What hangs in the gallery is a reproduction of the fragile original.)
Because the tour included so much information, there wasn't a lot of time to study each painting. Note your favorite pieces so you can return to them later.
Lunden's tour took about an hour and a half, and we saw about 35 pieces. With more than 40 docents at the Portrait Gallery, every tour will be different. But if the other docents know half as much as Lunden, the tour will make the museum much more accessible and will be well worth your time.
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-- Moira E. McLaughlin
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