Washington DC, Museum Capital of the World

There have been a few dozen museums built surrounding the Mall in our nation’s capital over the past century. These museums began with an exhibition highlighting the industrial revolution with all its magnificent machinery demonstrating the cleverness of Americans. Since then, we have been blessed to have museums in DC that bring us close to massive dinosaurs, Lincoln’s booth where he was fatally shot, Lucy- the first human, the Hope Diamond, the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s Portrait, the giant Blue Rooster on the roof of the modern art museum, the first airplane, the plane that dropped the first nuclear bomb,  our first space capsule, a huge Calder mobile, a moon rock and a $8 slice of pizza from one of 425 food trucks. Then in recent years we have looked at the darker side of our human history with the Holocaust Museum, Native American Museum and the Black History Museum.

The museum industry in DC has grown well beyond the Mall to include, the Spy Museum, the National Geographic Museum, the National Arboretum, the Phillips Collection, Hirshhorn Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Renwick Gallery, the Postal Museum, Museum of the Bible, Freer Gallery, Hillwood Estates, Larz Anderson House, the Neweum, and the National Building Museum. This list doesn’t even include the pending opening of the National Scissors Museum and the Museum of Undergarments.

At last we have two new Smithsonian museums opening on the Mall. They have been placed near the Capitol Building to entertain our legislators no doubt. I will see both of them today. I’m very excited. I made my reservation three months ago and I am inching towards the front of the line- right at the appointed time. The building is massive and windowless- all the more enticing as I contemplate the wonders inside. I approach the table and show my driver’s license and my admission ticket. At the next table I have my weight and measurements taken. At the next table, I read and sign the four-page waiver. Then finally a 20-foot door slides open and I enter a dimly lit huge room. I am greeted by several guides who quickly suit me up with overalls, gloves, boots and face mask with a miner’s light attached. This crew must work at the Daytona 500 pit stop on their off days. They are that good.

Down a darkening hallway I follow the blinking floor lights until it is pitch dark. The door swings open and I step into another world of slime and ooze. The Dawn of Man Hall was filled with screeching birds and beasts, animal body parts and the damp stink of death and mildew. I trudged along slowly and gradually crawled out of waste deep muck onto semi-dry land.

In the three hours allotted for the tour, I entered the Hall of Dust with its windblown sand dunes that quickly erased the proof of my existence as foot prints disappeared behind me. In a few other halls I was treated to red soil, black soil, orange soil, and even green soil. The guide assured me that these were all real and imported from their original sites. “Even the green?” I asked. “Yes, this is extremely rare rocky soil composed of tiny particles of semi-precious stones crushed by massive waves after centuries in the Pacific Ocean blender. It is only found on the southern-most beach of the Big Island of Hawaii”.

The Sand Castle Hall was particularly fun. Ocean sounds surrounded us as we constructed various castles and moats only to be flattened by a big wave that crashed through the room every thirty minutes, signaling it’s time to go. As I approached the final massive room- The Hall of Mud, I felt a sense of regret. I was almost finished. After a few mud pie fights, it was time to leave.

As I stepped into the sunlight, leaving the Museum of Dirt, I pulled out the admission ticket for the next newest museum which lay only twenty yards before me. It was a glistening white building with bubbles flying out of unseen orifices. Now, on to the Museum of Soap.