And then, the day after I wrote the previous post but before I posted it, I got a strong compulsion to just go down to the museum and see it again, right now, having not visited it in something over ten years, and take pictures for the post. (This was yesterday.) Well, it was everything I remembered and more. (In fact, though the sculpture no longer rotates, apparently, the vertigo was still present on that walkway — but, after all, the barriers are clear glass.)

I don’t believe the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art is photographable, not at least to the degree of conveying what it is like to sit in it. It is all triangles. If you walk to a corner you walk into an acute angle. The floor tiles are triangles. Even the sun patterns on the floor are triangles. The walkways fling you out into space over two, then one, level (or maybe three). I think the building has four levels but possibly five. It is a tesseract. You are often surprised by new vistas — new angles, see? — as you wander around. It looks different everywhere you go, and since the ceiling is all skylights it looks quite different at different times of the day (Impressionists would get fits). Photographs of it seem too square, too right-angley.

Anyway, I feel no way compelled to see the actual art exhibits in the East Wing. The building is enough.

Photos © ACF