"Damn You, Charles Baldwin!!!"

The other day I was talking with Absi (aka Abigail) and she told me about an amazing exhibit in the Smithsonian which featured ancient Roman statues from the Capitoline Museum in Rome.  Having just finished a biography of Caesar Augustus (aka Octavian) I was more than pleased to hear about this exhibit and told Absi that I would go see it with her if she came up to visit DC for the weekend.

So she did!

We met right before the National Gallery opened at 11AM because Absi and I are both SERIOUS about our museum-ing.  We planned on heading straight for the Capitoline statues, but didn't really know where they were and just agreed to wander through the museum until we found them.  I mean- how hard could it be to find a veritable plethora of priceless statues?  That's another thing that Absi and I are both serious about... with a positive spin I could call it a "sense of adventure" and with a negative spin I could call it "refusal to ask directions."  

Of course, you can't go wrong when wandering through a well-curated art museum containing thousands of priceless works of art.  We found some excellent examples of Monet, Van Gogh (my favorite), Matisse (not my favorite), Botticelli, Picasso, Rembrant (up there in my appreciation), Modigliani, etc....  We didn't take any pictures of these paintings because that would just make us look nerdy.

We did, however, take pictures of other things that make us look nerdy.

We decided that this was the Matthew Broderick of the 17th-Century Dutch.

There was a room full of paintings by people who should have also been professors at Hogwarts.  Mull it over.  Professor Meindert Hobbema.  It works, right?

And there were a few other things which I'm not allowed to post because Absi has reserved them for her blog.  You may check it out by clicking the link to the right.  

After a couple hours of wandering around the museum, we still hadn't found the Capitoline statues and were beginning to doubt ourselves.  We had been upstairs, downstairs, in the East Building, in the West Building, etc.... with no sign of them.  Confused, we wandered back to the entrance.  And there it was.

Ancient Roman 2000 Year Old Statue of Venus!

So it turned out that Absi had misinterpreted the information she read online and instead of a forest of statues there was only one.  And it was in the main entrance.  And we had walked right by it on our way in.  It was a cool statue, and I only made fun of Absi a little for her slight miscalculation.

Afterwards we headed to several of the other museums.  In the Natural History museum we ran into a sign that we simply could not resist taking a picture in front of:

"Who Lives in the Twilight Zone?"  WE DO!  WE STARTED THE CLUB!

Also while in the Natural History museum we walked through the Hall of Human Origins (or whatever it's called), where I was privileged enough to overhear one of the greatest conversations ever held between two young boys.  I think they were about twelve, maybe.  Fourteen at most. 

Boy 1:  "Damn you, Charles Baldwin!"

Boy 2:  "What?"

Boy 1:  "Do you know Charles Baldwin?"

Boy 2:  "What?"

Boy 1:  "Charles Baldwin.  Damn Charles Baldwin."

Boy 2:  "What?"

Boy 1:  "Charles Baldwin, he was the guy who invented the THEEEORY of EVOLUUUUTION."

Boy 2:  "Oh okay."

Somewhere out there there's a Baldwin brother who just got another line to add on his resume.  I imagine that he's sort of like the Tommy Wiseau of his family.  Of course, in that case the young boy would have had to scream: "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, CHARLES BALDWIN!"

Also, this post was in no way meant to prove that I also do culturally enriching things in addition to celebrating terrible movies.