Fighting off the Winter Blues: Arts & Culture Edition

Congratulations, blog readers, you’ve made it through the first week of 2011.  How’s the new year shaping up, everybody?  I have to say that personally, I’m not so impressed so far.  It really was a terrible idea to stick the new year holiday at the beginning of one of the most dismal months of the year.  January is always kind of a downer– holidays and vacations are over, winter isn’t anywhere near over, and everything takes on a kind of gray sheen.

I’m trying to take on the winter blues in a couple ways: 1) sleeping as much as possible.  2) when not asleep, staying inside on the couch for long stretches.  3) when not in hibernation mode, taking advantage of the fact that I live in a really cool city by doing fun DC things like a tourist instead of a jaded resident.

My “DC thing” this week was going to the National Portrait Gallery, my favorite museum in DC.  It’s a beautiful building, with the most amazing courtyard:

That in itself makes it worth a visit–a few minutes in the courtyard goes a long way to lifting my spirits– but the art is pretty cool too.  The museum houses both the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and there are some wonderful permanent collections.

This visit, I wanted to see Hide/Seek, ”the first major museum exhibition to focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture.  The exhibition features pieces by a wide range of artists, including John Singer Sargent, Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, Keith Haring, and Romaine Brooks, among many others.  The pieces on display vary as well, from paintings with explicit themes of sexuality to others whose tie to the theme is simply the orientation of the artist or subject.  A number of pieces deal with the AIDS crisis, some of them very powerfully and poignantly.  I found Hide/Seek quite compelling and worth the trip.

As with all the Smithsonian museums, the Portrait Gallery is free, which makes it easy if you just have an hour or two.  I actually wished I’d left myself a little more time, so I might try to go back before the exhibit closes on Feb 13.

Readers, what are your favorite methods to shake off the January doldrums?

Related posts:

1. Talking Dustbowl Blues
2. The Bush Portrait
3. Poem of the Week: Child at Heart Edition