The Sartle team had a madcap week running around Washington, DC and New York City this August. We stopped in DC to visit our friends at the smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and then a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art by MuseumHack (hackthemet) in NYC.
Suffice it to say, traveling from west to east is NOT FUN. We left San Francisco Airport around noon and didn’t get to Reagan Airport until about 11 pm. We went straight to bed as we had a full schedule of museum going the next day.
Our first stop was at the National Portrait Gallery where I interned a whopping FIVE years ago. While I had a quarter-life crisis Tania got work done.
Tania and I looking hella profesh!
We took a bunch of docent tours and tried to vote a million times for the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart in the Smithsonian Summer Showdown. Unfortunately, Georgie lost out to the panda at the National Zoo.
We discovered that the Portrait Gallery is the perfect museum for Sartle to dig through since, literally, every single portrait is of someone awesome (and probably a bit scandalous and bad ass)!
After a tour of the Hall of Presidents, we also officially decided to add every single American President to the Sartle database … Wish us luck!
The Portrait Gallery happens to stay open slightly later than the other museums on The Mall so by the time we were kicked out everyone else was fully closed and we were fully hungry! We did some late night monument hopping after a quick (ok, long) nap back at our hotel. My attempts to wake up Lincoln and have him scare off some pigeons didn’t work.
The next day we slept in disgustingly late and wasted half our museum-going time.
Luckily, we are young, able-bodied ladies so power walking our way through the rest of Washington wasn’t a big deal! Most of the day was spent marveling at how many massive museums were located right next door to each other. The National Gallery of Art is always a winner.
Some amazing selections from the National Gallery. Plus, the Fénykövi Elephant from the Natural History Museum, because I also interned there and it has really great memories for me, OK?!
We saw literally none of this and were extremely disappointed.
After far too many pretzels and hotdogs from dubious truck stands it was time to hop on the train for a three hour ride up to NYC.
Our next stop was with Ethan and MuseumHack at The Met! It was my first time there and it blew my mind! There was so much artwork I had learned about in school and was finally seeing in person! The wave of nostalgia I felt was overwhelming … I couldn’t have been the only kid who watched Sesame Street’s classic Don’t Eat the Pictures (1983) on repeat, right?
A very important lesson to learn before going to a museum!
We ran (literally) around the museum looking at amazing artifacts we admittedly would’ve missed if not for Ethan. Items including but not limited to: a magic wand, an ancient iPhone, cross dressers and some asses that just won’t quit!
Our tour ended up going over a bit (shhh!) but we were having so much fun it easily could’ve definitely gone longer if not for Ethan’s next event happening any second.
Museums ARE f*cking awesome! Thanks Ethan!
We found so many paintings to add to our categories: a surprising amount of bodily fluids, nip slips galore, a few celebrities, and a slew of other new categories we are almost ready to roll out. We spent the rest of the day at the museum, which was entirely not enough time.
Alas, all good things must come to an end and we flew out of JFK as the sun was rising.
Missing the East Coast,
Sr. Editor