Making our way upstairs to the rotunda the space continues to be awesome. The sculptures in both this space and the one below change every couple of years. Seeing statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis was a surprise. Each state can pick a new person every two years, made of either white marble or cast bronze. The newest bronze ones are Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, both of which are not well proportioned or posed compared to the white marble specimens.

The ceiling of the rotunda has a god-like image of Washington in heaven, surrounded by the other inhabitants. He is like Zeus on Mt. Olympus.

The visitors center exhibit was designed by Ralph Applebaum & Associates. It shows the evolution of the Capitol itself in model form during each time period of its evolution. The entrance to the exhibit is quite beautiful, anchored by a model of the Capitol’s front face, with large white marble walls nearby, featuring incised quotes.

The entire space is very much like the presence of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, but, in this case, conveys a civic statement instead of a religious one.

They created a series of great civic spaces that owe their design to the ancient bath vaults of Ancient Rome. That said, the system has been done in a very crisp, modern way. All of the stations are identical, most notably the details of the ceilings. The lighting cries out for some studies, with all of the different colors of light: there are shades of pink, yellow, green, and bluish tones.

The intersections of the vaults in the ceiling are expressed quite beautifully, and the insets appear to have some sound containment panels. It is a beautiful cast-in-place detail and very elegant.

This is an example of how modernism can be a neutral field to the entire city and surrounding areas that the Metro serves.

In Atlanta the MARTA system has taken the position of designing each station to be individual which costs more and looses the look and feel of the identity that the DC metro has.

In 1851 another fire destroyed 35,000 of the 55,000 volumes held, many of those being from Jefferson’s original library. Many were later replaced with the same vintage editions and are now on exhibit.

The new–and current–Library was planned in the late 1880s and finished in 1889. The outside is a mixture of classical architecture, with fountains reminiscent of those in Rome.

It’s a cathedral of learning, containing narratives of all types throughout the library in the form of sculpture, architecture, and painting. The little babies up the stair-rail speak of the different professions. Paintings speak of early man in the cave and how communication evolved. The main lobby contains the last book written by a German monk, and one of the mint condition Guttenburg Bibles. The main reading room–viewable in whole from the upper lobby–is amazing, encircled with key figures in literature and learning. It’s a heroic room.

This place is an amazing working library and an amazing piece of America that we all can share.

Many great exhibits are inside, and SEGD–an organization to which I belong–used to have its offices there. One unique feature inside: the stairs inside are shallow to allow horses to climb them with minimal trouble.

It is a wonderful place for modern sculpture, anchored by Hector Guimard’s Metro station entrance and the restaurant building. The main focus is a huge fountain that shoots water, creating sound that allows one to escape the D.C. mall noise and tourists.

It is a place for respite.

The spider alien figures are similar to what I saw in Korea at The Leeum. I also recall seeing some of these pieces in Chicago’s Millennium Park a couple years ago.

The proverbial Claus Oldenberg upsize element is its main piece.

The landscape is a wonderful foil to the space, allowing each sculpture to have its own “organic shaped” room. This is a contrast to the carefully designed spaces of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Visit this place the next time that you are there–it is a national treasure.

The memorial appears to be one of those designed-by-committee memorials, full of text, typical military figures (not well done), and text all over (likely because they could not agree on a single copy set). The design of the three blades of grass is like a broken St. Louis Arch by Earo Saarinnen (which McDonald’s now owns). The flow is like the upward thrust of three Blue Angels, ascending together and splitting off. The underwritten award was sponsored by Boeing and the United Arab Emirates Airforce among others. I’m sure this was easy to fund, but, sadly, not so well crafted unlike the simplicity of the Vietnam Memorial. That said, it was certainly dramatic to stand in the middle of the three upward triangular forms.

Sometimes these shadows are more interesting then the paintings themselves. As one looks at them one can see that there are different lights pointing from the gallery to make up the different shades. The one painting I show here is van Gogh’s Green Baby, something I haven’t seen before. These small paintings have a larger shadow per proportion of frame, and are particularly interesting to observe.

Architects Rem Koolhaas, Mario Botta, and Jean Nouvel each designed one museum, joined with a central reception building by Botta. It is beautifully crafted architecture. The Botta museum is a beautiful collection of traditional Korean art, both pottery and paintings. The casework is magnificent, and the collection is very sensitively curated with beautiful colors often unseen in Asian museums. The gift shop has products designed by the students at SADI (Samsung Art & Design Institute).

The exterior installation of the spiders is a great organic series of pieces contrasting with the crisp architecture. You feel like you’re encountering the human-exterminating Martian vessels from the War of the Worlds as you pass the spiders on the deck next to the entrance. From there you enter the lobby designed by Mario Botta.

The Rem Koolhaas building is very raw and open (as is his style), while the Nouvel building is colder than the other work of his I’ve seen. The art matches the building design.

I was a bit hesitant to see how the remake turned out. I feel that sometimes one can do too much and be too polished, leading to a loss of the message and intimacy. I feel that way  about the new Newseum in Washington, D.C. The old one was quite small and its messages were clear. The new version, however, has its own building on the mall, and has lost the spirit of gumshoe journalism. Despite the engraving of the noble First Amendment on its façade, the new Newseum has become a hodgepodge, no longer a carrier of the message and promise of journalism, but, rather, a place that appears as an empty void with too much white space and a prevalence of television monitors.

Whether by chance or good design, the Solidarity Musuem is a lot like the old Newseum. Located in the basement of Solidarity Party headquarters just outside Gdansk’s historic district, it’s not as easy to get to as it might be, but, despite the logistical difficulties of attracting visitors, this is part of the story. The road to freedom, after all, begins in back alleyways and eventually makes it onto the streets. From the entrance, one is confronted with an armored militia (Communist police) vehicle and is led to the back of the building, closer to the Gdansk Shipyard entrance and the 1970 monument to the killed strikers.

The exhibit itself is called “Road to Freedom.” One enters through a subway-like entrance that is convoluted at odd angles so you can’t see where you’re going until you make three or four turns (and even then you’re disoriented). The passage has a recorded voiceover of people being arrested, allowing you to feel the panic of the moment. It reminded me of my father’s experience before my family moved to the US in 1962. He spent four months in jail for not naming the person from whom he bought a piece of leather on the black market in the 1950s.

The Solidarity Movement developed when the people of Poland had enough of one-party dictatorial rule. The leaders of the movement looked at the example of revolutionaries in Prague in 1976 (and also how Moscow called the Warsaw Pact nations to use violent force against them). In Poland, the movement had small beginnings in the Gdansk Shipyard in 1970 following an explosion in the shipyard in which 21 workers were killed due to lax safety measures being taken by the employer (the government). It was then that the workers united to be heard and not only be represented by the government sanctioned and supported union. To get a great picture of all that happened, I recommend watching Strike (2005), directed by Joan Stein. The 1970s strike was disorganized, almost like a mob war with police in which many were killed by police, and many were labeled as enemies of the state and blackballed from having a shipyard job. It was years later when Lech Wałęsa and his associates brought the government to its knees by having “solidarity” with other workers (and the Catholic Church) around Poland that froze transport, commerce, and, essentially, the entire planned economy. A Catholic priest named Jerzy Popiełuszko was interrigated and killed by the militia, which angered the Solidarity folks even more. Poland was in a state of war for over a year during which martial law applied to the entire country. These victories by Solidarity were the beginning of the fall of the Iron Curtain across Europe.

The exhibit shows the stores of the Communist period, which, as I remember from my own experience, had four eggs, two pieces of sausage, and a milk truck in front that ladeled milk iont your glass bottle. The ticket to the exhibit is actually a rationing coupon, making the truth of the past all that much more real to visitors today. Of course, Communist Party members had their own stores and did not have to stand in line. Even lines had a purpose in Poland’s government-planned economy: standing in line kept you from having time for idle thought like revolution and being unhappy with your situation in life.

The best thing about this museum is the attempt–mostly successful–to give visitors a glimpse of life under Communism. The bathroom section shows the typical–some often crude–jokes that were made during the time: a scrawled note says “Making Cheese for the Soviets” on the back of the toilet.

Another room contains a jail cell, as well as a replica of the tables where Solidarity’s negotiations were made with the government, showcasing the 21 Demands, including free speech and labor unions independent of the Communist Party. It surprises some that this “worker’s paradise” methodologically discarded ideas such as pensions, workplace safety, and paid maternity leave, and health care. In the c enter of the room sits a white statue of Lenin, similar to one appearing at key government buildings throughout the Soviet empire. A film runs in the background, showing the signing of the papers.

Incidentally, the papers were signed with a pen that had a photo of the Polish Pope Jan Paweł II who was instrumental in keeping the Poles inspired and together during this time. Religion, of course, was mostly abolished by Communist rulers, being deemed incompatible with communism. Government control over this private part of an individual’s life is sadly nothing new. In Bohemia (the modern-day Czech Republic), for example, the Prussians invaders abolished Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox Church to try to instill Lutheranism. This made the Czechs skeptical of religion to this day. Poland, on the other hand, has always been devoted to Catholicism, which arrived in Poland in 966 AD. The Church, in fact, were the keepers of the Polish language, culture, and music at the time when Poland–as a state–did not exist from 1795 to 1918. The Polish language was forbidden in public education during that time. Even well into the 1910s when the Austro-Hungarians, Prussians, and Russians controlled portions of Poland, people were learning in clandestine environments. My brother was in Poland until 1980, taking English classes in a Lutheran Church since the only government sanctioned foreign language was Russian.

Back to the museum: one walks into the next space and amidst images of the strike and the death of Father Popieluszko. The next three rooms chronicle the events around the 1970 strike and how people were killed and kept in prison. The last room has an effective visual of cause-and-effect, demonstrated by a series of red dominoes that eventually all fall down. The museum even houses a series images from Tibet, talking about the Tibetan people’s wish to be free of China today.

The point is that the story of Solidarity and of the Soviet-era Polish state was a gritty one, and this museum lets you feel it with the spaces, the lighting, the threathening voiceover, and the footage. No matter how well designed and crafted the exhibits are, it’s useful that they’re a bit rough around the edges (as can be seen in the 21 points sign board).

The Solidarity Museum in Gdansk is worth a visit for anyone interested in learning about this very recent turning-point in human history.