I can also sit in the art museum in DC (don't know if it's part of the Smithsonian or not) and watch the Calder mobile for hours. I used to drive the four hours from Jersey to sit and watch that thing on days off.

Two from opposite ends of the spectrum:

Joseph Cornell

He made shadow box constructions of found objects, old illustrations, birds, maps, blocks, etc. which feel like little mysteries, like clues to some aging other world waiting to be discovered. Check out the link; there's a lot of pix but they're too large to post in this thread.

Frederic Church

The best of the Hudson River School landscape painters of the mid-1800's. With amazing technique and almost scientific attention to detail, he was for a time the most famous painter in America, where his often gigantic canvases (The Heart of the Andes, linked below, was over 5 feet tall and 9 feet wide) toured the country as single-painting exhibits. Here's his two most famous works and my personal favorite, West Hills, New Haven, which perfectly captures one of my favorite sights--being up in the hills somewhere, with a view to the horizon, watching the shadows of giant clouds crawl across the landscape below. I'm astounded by the way he can capture light and shadow in a landscape, the bright clarity of a patch of light breaking through the trees.

The Heart of the Andes

Niagara

West Rock, New Haven

Here's something I just found while looking for pix to link: there's a whole damn lotta old paintings here in the Visual Arts section.

I recently studied both of those artists. Cornell used to send his shadow boxes to female celebrities. Many of them sent them back, not thinking he'd be a very famous artist one day and it may be a good investment to keep his pieces around.

Also, I could never really tell the difference between Moran, Church and Bierstadt. The three main nature/landscape artists around their time.

I had to edit. They are wonderful painters. Their pieces really are breathtaking.

Well I'll admit that my Frederic Church love came about at a time before I knew anything about the Hudson River School, when I stumbled upon a major Church retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington. Instant love and awe. Actually went back the next day to see it again and rent the audio tour.

So maybe it's a soft spot for my "first love," landscape-wise. But in comparison to Moran and Bierstadt (and Thomas Cole, Church's teacher), Church still stands out to me because of the way he depicts light.

Any time I go to the Met in NYC, I have to search out Heart of the Andes and marvel at it for 10 minutes.

The National Gallery is sadly the only large art museum I've ever been to (and it's separate from the Smithsonian). There's a whole room of Calder stuff in the East Wing (I guss that's what it's called - it's the modern art section), and it's fucking amazing and one of my favorite parts of the whole thing.

They have a decent amount of Jasper Johns stuff there, too, and some good Picasso's (mostly pre-Cubism IIRC, awesome figurative stuff), some Max Ernst sculptures and paintings, and just a pretty solid permanent collection in general. I'd really like to go there again.

When I went a few years ago, they had an Art Nouveau exhibit going on that was pretty fucking sweet. I like a lot of artists from that period, but I have a hard time remembering any names other than Klimt and Munch (who I've actually never been crazy about). There were some Klimt paintings on display, and I'm pretty sure this one was there:

[img][473:500]http://lab.dartmouth.edu/Vienna/German64/Klimt/Baby.jpg[/img]

I love that painting.

Too much swaddling.

Looks like the cover to Hail To The Thief.