Hirshhorn Museum and Freer/Sackler Gallery

The Hirshhorn Museum's signature piece is this huge hyper-realistic sculpture by Ron Mueck. What a cool introduction to their collection of modern art.

Fernand Léger's "Nude on a Red Background" was probably one of the few pieces I really liked.

I'll be the first to admit I don't always get modern art. For instance, this piece, which appears to be two sculpted busts; one perhaps bronze, and one perhaps marble; is actually two molded busts; one chocolate and one soap. The artist then licked the chocolate one and bathed with the soap one to obscure their features.

Seriously.

Then there's this one that perhaps is telling us to shove all that old classic art in a closet and forget about it.

And this piece reminds me that a woman's work is never done. No matter how perfect she is.

If you get confused about modern art, you can always read this to help sort it out.

Yeah, whatever....

We also visited the Freer/Sackler Gallery today. They have an interesting exhibition about a Japanese artist named Kitagawa Utamaro. Three of his huge scrolls are displayed together there for the first time in decades.

This first piece, called "Cherry Blossoms at Yoshikawa" was documented to be in Paris in the 1880s. It was purchased by a French collector, and in 1957 by Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Boston.

The second piece, "Moon at Shinagawa", was also in Paris in the 1880s and was purchased by Charles Lang Freer in 1903.

The third piece, "Snow at Fukagawa", remained in Paris for years. It was purchased in 1948 and returned to Japan where it was on display at a department store for three days. Then it just disappeared! And just as mysteriously, it was rediscovered by the Okada Museum in 2014 and the Freer/Sackler Gallery conceived and implemented this wonderful exhibition.