The frugal travels of a vagabond

The Burghers of Calais, Auguste Rodin, 1953-59; under French law no more than 12 original casts of works of Rodin may be made and this is one of the 12; the work was commissioned by the city of Calais

King and Queen, Henry Moore, 1953; this is one of the few works by Henry Moore where you can actually tell what the sculpture represents; most of his work consists of round blocks that could be anything

The Hirshhorn is sited halfway between the Washington Monument and the US Capitol on the National Mall; the sculpture garden is sited below street level and just across the street from the Hirshhorn Museum

Monument to Balzac, Auguste Rodin, 1891-98, cast 1965-66; on July 2, 1939 (22 years after the Rodin's death) this model was cast in bronze for the first time and placed on the Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris at the intersection with Boulevard Raspail

Post-Balzac, Judith Shea, 1991; at Hirshhorn's death in 1981, he willed an additional 6,000 works and a $5 million endowment to the Museum; much of his fortune came from uranium mining

Pittsburgh Landscape, David Smith, 1954; in 1966 Hirshhorn donated his collection, consisting of 6,000 paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20h centuries (constituting one of the world's largest private art treasures), to the US government

Subcommittee, Tony Cragg, 1991; a shrewd investor, Hirshhorn sold off his Wall Street investments two months before the collapse of 1929, realizing $4 million in cash

The Drummer, Barry Flanagan, 1989-90; there's also a work by Flanagan across the National Mall at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden which is between the West Building and the National Museum of Natural History

Crouching Woman, Auguste Rodin, 1880-82, cast 1962; this is the original work; Joseph Hirshhorn emigrated to the US from Latvia and went to work as an office boy on Wall Street at age 14 and ended up with a fortune of $100+ million

Wish Tree for Washington, DC, Yoko Ono, 2007; call me old-fashioned, but when did giving a museum a tree make you an artist?; Ono is 88 years old now and will be remembered for her marriage to John Lennon more than for her art

Figure, Jacques Lipchitz, 1926-30, cast 1958-61; Lipchitz fled his native Lithuania in WW2 and settled in Paris where he became friends with Amedeo Modigliani and became a leading Cubist sculptor

Eros, Inside Eros, Arman, 1986; this French-born, American artist began signing his works only with his first name as an homage to Van Gogh, who also signed his works with his first name, Vincent

George Washington, Gilbert Stuart, 1796; for most Americans, this is the most familiar and beloved image of Washington; despite never finishing the piece, Stuart used the painting as the model for more than 50 other portraits, with this image also used on the one dollar bill

Boston silversmith (these pieces are from the 1790s) Paul Revere is best known for his midnight ride to alert the colonial militia in April 1775 to the approach of British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord

Thomas Jefferson, Jean-Antoine Houdon, 1789; Jefferson declared Houdon 'perhaps the foremost artist in the world,' and sat for the great French sculptor shortly before leaving Paris, where he was serving as US minister to France

John Adams, Gilbert Stuart, 1823; after visiting his 90 year-old father, John Quincy Adams decided he wanted a portrait of him so he commissioned this work; both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on July 4, 1826

Appeal to the Great Spirit, Cyrus E. Dallin, 1909; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, welcomes 1.2+ million visitors each year and it was very easy to spend several hours here; admission was $25 but well worth it

Washington at Dorchester Heights, Gilbert Stuart, 1806; first hung in Faneuil Hall, Dorchester Heights overlooks Boston Harbor, and it was at this very spot that Washington triumphed, claiming victory and forcing the British fleet in 1776 to leave Boston

Samuel Adams, John Singleton Copley, c. 1772; commissioned by John Hancock, this portrait shows radical activist Adams challenging the Royal Governor of Massachusetts after the Boston Massacre of 1770 in which 5 Bostonians were killed by British troops

Sons of Liberty Bowl, Paul Revere, 1768; the Liberty Bowl is a gleaming emblem of civil disobedience, honoring the Massachusetts representatives who called for protests against the new taxes imposed on the colonies

John Hancock, John Singleton Copley, 1765; Hancock was born poor, but his fortunes shifted dramatically in 1764, when he inherited the money, business empire and Boston Beacon Hill mansion of his uncle, Thomas

John Quincy Adams, John Singleton Copley, 1796; Copley painted this portrait, when 28 year-old Adams was in London during his term as US ambassador to the Netherlands; the portrait was given to Adams's mother, Abigail, who was soon to become First Lady

The Passage of the Delaware, Thomas Sully, 1819; this painting, commissioned by the state of North Carolina for the Senate Hall of the State House in Raleigh, depicts Washington the night before he surprised British troops at the Battle of Trenton

Paul Revere, John Singleton Copley, 1768; Revere is contemplating the teapot, no doubt aware of the symbolism in the year new taxes were imposed on tea; his famous midnight ride was still 8 years away

Paul Revere was Boston's leading silversmith for nearly 50 years (these pieces are from the late 1700s); Revere owned a small silver mill and, in 1801, started a large industrial mill to make rolled copper

The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 17 June 1775, John Trumbull, c. 1815; Trumbull watched the battle from Boston, across the Charles River, and throughout his career made paintings of the historic event which had so much impact on him

Paul Revere, Gilbert Stuart, 1813; in 1800, Revere became the first American to successfully roll copper into sheets for use as sheathing on naval vessels; Revere was married twice and had 8 children with each wife

The New-York Historical Society was founded in 1804 as New York's first museum; the hyphenated name is correct since it was the general use back then and has never been changed (it's also chiseled in stone on the building)

Keith Haring in the Pop Shop, Tseng Kwong Chi, 1986; Haring was synonymous with New York's downtown art scene in the 1980s; with encouragement from Andy Warhol, he opened the Pop Shop on Lafayette St with the goal of making his art accessible

The famed Waldorf Astoria lobby clock debuted at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a Royal commission from Queen Victoria; a legendary meeting point, the four faces of the clock showed the time in New York, Madrid, Greenwich and Paris

The New-York Historical Society purchased all 474 of the amazing preparatory watercolor drawings used by John James Audubon for his 1838 Birds of America masterpiece; this was the only watercolor from the set on display

We the People, Nari Ward, 2017; created entirely from shoelaces donated by museum visitors and New York City students, Ward encourages inspection of the first three words of the Constitution's Preamble as they relate to immigration and discrimination

Surprisingly, there wasn't a large exhibit dedicated to 9/11 but this case has some of the gifts left at Ground Zero; like other indoor facilities in the city, you had to show proof of vaccination and the admission here is $22

George Washington, Rembrandt Peale, 1853; in 1823 Peale announced that he, one of the few living artists who had painted Washington from life, would create a portrait that would surpass all others in its authenticity and expression

New York merchant James Beekman purchased this coach in 1771 and it's one of only three 18th century North American coaches to survive in original condition; he paid 138 pounds for it (almost $33,000 today)

Ted Tinling designed this dress for Rosie Casals in 1972; it's part of the Billie Jean King Archive section of the Center for Women’s History which is the first of its kind in the nation within the walls of a major museum

Original Nine, Bela Ugrin, 1970; these women signed $1 contracts at the Houston Racquet Club to play the Virginia Slims Invitational in Houston marking the start of professional women's tennis; they were honored at the 2021 US Open on the 50th anniversary

On April 30, 1789, George Washington took the Presidential oath of office with his hand on this Bible, which belonged to the nearby St. John's Masonic Lodge; other presidents that have used this same Bible include Harding, Eisenhower, Carter and the first Bush

George Washington began his presidency at Federal Hall on Wall Street as New York City was the country's first capital; after taking the oath of office, Washington sat in this mahogany chair before addressing Congress

This re-creation of the White House's Oval Office is from Reagan's second term after Nancy had hired a Hollywood decorator to update the room; Reagan had Frederic Remington's Bronco Buster statue displayed to reinforce his connection to the American West

Katharine Graham and Truman Capote at the Black and White Ball, Bernard Gotfryd, 1966; this ball was dubbed the Party of the Century with Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, as honoree thrusting her into the spotlight (there was an exhibition on her life here)

This door from an engine belonging to Fire Department of New York's elite Rescue Company 2 was salvaged after all the men died while trying to rescue trapped people in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center on 9/11

The New-York Historical Society building on Central Park West was completed in 1908; it is next door to the massive American Museum of Natural History which didn't interest me

Photographs of Calder (1931) and Picasso (1932), Man Ray; grandsons of the two artists conceived this exhibition about the two artists who were engaged in a lifelong discourse about modernity; the exhibition moved to the Houston Museum of Fine Arts in 2022

Seven Black, Red and Blue, Alexander Calder, 1947; Calder received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously in 1977, after refusing to receive it from Gerald Ford one year earlier in protest of the Vietnam War

Bull's Head, Pablo Picasso, 1942; Picasso created the original assemblage for this bronze from a discarded bicycle seat and handlebars; perhaps his most famous work is the 1937 epic Guernica at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid

Calder sent Picasso this invitation to the Cirque Calder with a handwritten note on November 10, 1932; the exhibition highlights intriguing parallels between these two contemporaries

Head of a Woman, Pablo Picasso, 1962; Picasso's work is often categorized into periods: Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919)

My Shop, Alexander Calder, 1955; this oil painting of Calder's Roxbury CT studio includes 16 identifiable works from every stage of his career; the Whitney in NYC has the largest collection of Calder's work

The Studio, Pablo Picasso, 1955; this work shows the interior of Picasso's neo-Moorish villa in Cannes, France where he lived from 1955 to 1961; Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women

Alexander Calder in his Roxbury Studio, Arnold Newman, 1957; their fourth and final meeting took place when Calder visited Picasso's studio in France and made what he probably thought was a joke but apparently offended Picasso

Pablo Picasso in the Fournas studio, Vallauris, Arnold Newman, 1954; Calder was introduced to Picasso when Picasso visited Calder's exhibition in Paris in 1931 with their third meeting being a family luncheon in 1952 hosted by a mutual friend

Acrobats, Alexander Calder, 1929; the Museum of Modern Art bought its first Calder in 1934 for $60; Calder's 7.5-foot-long hanging mobile Flying Fish (1957) fetched $25.9 million, setting an auction record for the sculptor at Christie's New York in 2014

Acrobat, Pablo Picasso, 1930; Picasso here gives the illusion of using a single, unbroken line to render the silhouette of this astonishingly flexible acrobat, similar to Calder's wire drawings in space

Vase with a Flower, Pablo Picasso, 1951; on May 11, 2015 Picasso's painting Women of Algiers set the record for the highest price ever paid for a painting at the time when it sold for $179.3 million at Christie's in New York

Picasso and Calder are seen in this photo at the Spanish Pavilion at the Exhibition Internationale de Paris in 1937; Picasso and Calder met just four times in person with this being the second

The Straw Hat with Blue Foliage, Pablo Picasso, 1936; Picasso was the first artist to receive a special honor exhibition at the Grand Gallery of the Louvre Museum in Paris in celebration of his 90th birthday; admission to the High Museum is $16.50

Dispersed Objects with Brass Gong, Alexander Calder, 1948; Calder ingeniously introduced sound into some of his mobiles as he did here with the small red spiral hitting the gong when moved by air currents

Figure: Woman in Wire, Pablo Picasso, 1931; ironically, both artists experimented with wire as a medium (Calder in his teens); one critic said of Picasso - no painter or sculptor, not even Michelangelo, had been as famous as this in his own lifetime

Vertical Foliage, Alexander Calder, 1941; Calder perfected an antigravity effect with a system of weights and balances that make heavy elements seem to float in air; Calder created 2,000+ pieces of jewelry in his lifetime, many as gifts for friends

In 1963, the 16th St Baptist Church was bombed by KKK members killing four young girls; still a functioning church, it began in 1873 (just two years after the city was founded) with the current building dating from 1911

This bell from the 16th Street Baptist Church was rung by King family members at the Lincoln Memorial in 2013 to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington; 17 days later it was rung again to mark the 50th anniversary of the Church's bombing

Arthur George Gaston, born in 1892 to sharecroppers, built a multimillion dollar empire in Birmingham which started with a funeral home then grew to include a bank, construction firms, a business school, insurance firms, and a motel

The KKK was pervasive throughout AL during the Civil Rights era with Klan members in positions of authority from Governor George Wallace on down; it's difficult to imagine today how dangerous it was for a Black to do anything that threatened the status quo

Hugo Black began his career as a Birmingham lawyer with ties to the KKK before serving in the Senate for 10 years; he later served on the Supreme Court for 34 years where he participated in some of history's most significant civil rights decisions

When Arthur Davis Shores was admitted to the AL bar in 1939, he was the first Black attorney to be licensed in the state in 30 years; he fought for civil rights for decades and eventually was the first Black elected to the Birmingham city council

Kelly Ingram Park, across from 16th St Baptist Church and the Civil Rights Museum, served as a central staging ground for demonstrations during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement; this monument is dedicated to the 4 girls killed at 16th St Baptist Church

During the Civil Rights era, the city owned two armored personnel carriers that Police Commissioner Bull Connor used to intimidate demonstrators and, for many, came to represent white oppression; this was one of the two tanks and was donated by the city

The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument was designated by President Obama in 2017 and includes the Civil Rights Institute, 16th Street Baptist Church, Kelly Ingram Park and most of the landmarks made famous during the 1960s Civil Rights fight

Birmingham long had a reputation as one of the South's most fiercely segregated cities; from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s, nearly 50 unsolved, racially directed bombings led the city to be called 'Bombingham'

In May 1963, Bull Connor confronted student demonstrators, first with mass arrests and then with police dogs and firehoses; these confrontations spurred a public outcry which turned the nation's attention to the struggle for racial equality

Rev Fred Shuttlesworth, of Bethel Baptist Church, filed lawsuits, trained protestors and led demonstrations to advance the cause of civil rights; he survived an armed beating by the KKK, the bombing of his home and numerous assaults but never backed down

The Foot Soldier monument recreates the infamous photograph of a policeman grabbing a student by the shirt while the police dog aggressively lunges forward; this monument to that iconic image honors those who marched and demanded equality in Birmingham

In 1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dynamic leadership of the Civil Rights movement and steadfast commitment to achieving racial justice through nonviolent action

Richard Arrington Jr became the first Black mayor of Birmingham in 1979 and went on to serve for 20 years; on election night, Arrington received a congratulatory phone call from President Carter who invited him to the White House (he accepted the invitation, of course)