Museum feng shui - from a lifelong gawker's perspective

Twenty-three years ago I became a certified feng shui consultant. And if one could be certified as a gawker, I'd be that too. When I’m out for a walk I gawk at plants and trees and buildings. In my color studio I gawk at people’s faces; elsewhere I gawk at how they dress. At a museum I will even pay to gawk.

Fortunately, in Washington DC, where I gawked this past week, most of the museums are free, courtesy of our tax dollars. A gawker’s paradise! So gawk I did--seven museums in four days. From a feng shui perspective, a space works if it fulfills its purpose, it's attractive (you're drawn in), the energy flows smoothly (uncluttered), and people feel safe and supported in it. 

What makes for a positive museum visit?

1. Subject is interesting (or the curators have made it interesting)
2. You learn something; your world has broadened.
3. You can take your time to be with pieces that intrigue you—extra credit if there are options that allow you to go deeper.
4. You can get close enough to really see the object/display and read the curator’s description. 
5. If there’s audio, it’s from a single source (headset or speaker) 
6. The directional flow between rooms is clear so you don’t go in circles or miss a room.
7. There is S P A C E between objects/displays allowing visitors to move freely and to focus on one thing at a time. 
8. Extra credit for the building’s architecture and/or the gardens around it.

Museums (and museum-adjacent places) I visited: 

• Dumbarton Oaks Museum (free) and Gardens ($10). Their website photos are no match for being there. The grand music room (a replica of a palazzo living room in Renaissance Florence) is where international diplomats met at the end of World War II to draft the UN charter. Then head down a long corridor and get blown away by a modern cluster of eight light-filled circular glass rooms with a fountain at the center (Philip Johnson, architect)—each with no more than a dozen exquisite pre-Colombian artifacts on display. Excellent descriptions, lots of space to appreciate. Ten acres of gardens, designed by Beatrix Farrand in the 1940s, are a beautiful respite from an otherwise urban experience. Get a load of these stone mosaics!  An A+ experience. 

• Planet Word. Journalist Tom Friedman and his wife Ann bought the derelict Franklin School (1869), renovated it and turned it into a novel learning lab. Explore the power of language, how we use words to convince (or manipulate), how different cultures assemble words to construct meaning and much more. Spacious and engaging. Childhood fantasy come true: a secret room behind one of the bookcases in the library where you can sit and have a wide variety of poems read to you as the words appear on a screen. Unlike any “museum” experience I’ve ever had—I give it an A. 

• The Museum of African-American History and Culture. Striking exterior architecture. I’m trying to get a more balanced understanding of American history, so I couldn't wait to visit this newest Smithsonian museum. The lower floors (appropriately dark) focus on the long dark shadow of slavery, and the upper floor is rich with African-American culture: music, dance, art, theater etc. Call me an old fart, but I hope the current trend of museum as multi-sensory interpretive center fades soon. Perhaps it works for younger people with short attention spans and the ability to focus on many things simultaneously. The displays are word-heavy so you have to get in close to read (difficult in a crowd) and sound-heavy, with voices talking from several directions at once. You get short clips of narration or enticing music, but only enough to make you want to hear the rest…and then it switches, leaving you hanging. I enjoyed the culture exhibits upstairs, but again, just enough to whet your appetite. Horrifying map of slave trade below. Sad to say, I rate the gawker experience only a C. 

• The National Museum of Asian Art (Freer and Sackler Galleries) A wide variety of art from all over Asia, ancient and modern. Spaciously displayed, well lit, curator descriptions helpful. The Peacock Room, designed by James Whistler to display a shipping magnate’s collection of Asian porcelain is downright spectacular. If you like Asian art, as I do, you’ll love this place. 

• The National Building Museum ($10). Super cool building (1885) inside and out. Their focus statement below explains my own fascination with the built environment. My 21-year-old grandson Alexander and I could have spent hours in the visitor center alone with the interactive exhibits on building materials, environmental impacts of the built environment, comparisons of different cities on a variety of dimensions. Upstairs: scale models of famous homes and buildings across the country, an exhibit on affordable housing, and then… OMG! The Brick City exhibit! A fabulous collection of LEGO models of all sorts of international buildings--modest to extravagant, like the 12’-long replica of London’s St. Pancras Station. Excellent signage - you can click on the QR code and get all sorts of information about each model, including suggestions for DIY. Show runs thru 2025. Even if Alexander and I hadn’t been LEGO fans, this place deserves an A. 

• The National Portrait Gallery - a wing of the National Gallery of American Art. I had only a few minutes to scope the scene because my ride was waiting. I entered with low expectations, imagining painted headshots of dead white men. So wrong. Yes, George Washington, et al are there, but so much more—a wide range of people from all walks of life, rendered in unexpected ways. Plenty of space and light, great descriptions of each person (pros and cons) and the artist. When I return in May for Alexander’s graduation this will be my first destination. A+ 

• The Renwick (contemporary American Arts & Crafts). Cool old building from the mid-19th century that almost met the wrecking ball but for Jackie Kennedy’s intervention. Again, plenty of space and light to focus on each object. Black and Native artists well represented. Woodwork, weaving, quilting, beading, etc. Exquisite objects, judicious and eclectic curation, very personal and varied expressions of human creativity. Easy to see it all in an hour or two. This enormous (12' x 9') contemporary quilt by Biwa Butler is based on a photo of the Harlem Hellfighters (1919). Do zoom in. It wows everyone who walks into the room. Here's a detail of one face. 

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Thank you for being here, <<First Name>>. I hope this gives you a brief respite from the terrifying news from the Middle East. If you've got a favorite museum (anywhere) let me know! I love hearing from you and always welcome your feedback… just reply to this email and I promise to get back to you. Feel free to share these newsletters with your friends and invite them to subscribe.

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Put Yourself in the Way of Beauty

Yeah, after all that, still one more. Just savoring the space and light in the big room at the Renwick.