I have 1 free day in DC and want to visit the Smithsonian. Any suggestions as to which individual museum is the best to visit for a 40+ male white guy?
Any thots on your experiences there would be welcome and appreciated.

Air and Space Museum. Without doubt.

Another vote for Air & Space Museum. Best museum in the world as far as I am concerned!

At American History, the transportation exhibit just re-opened, and there's a new display of NYT photos from the 50s ("The Tumultuous Fifties: A View From the New York Times Photo Archives").

The Post's Weekend Section has a complete listing of all exhibits - both permanent and temporary - that you could scan to see if anything sounds especially interesting. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Mar11.html (I think registration may be required these days; personally, I'm trying to get everyone I know to be from Whittier, AK - 99693 - just to make things interesting)

Very helpful, thank you. My first two thots were of the air and flight and the history museums, so you guys confirmed it for me. Now, I wonder if I have time for both. Might have to pick just one, and that will be tough.

The Air & Space Museum has an IMAX theater as well as some ride simulators (piloting a jet) if that's of interest to you. I recently did that one plus Natural History in a day, but I'm not one to linger in museums any more. I think you could easily do one in-depth and then stop & see a few highlights of another; they're only a 5-10 minute walk apart. My vote for in-depth would go to American History unless you're a big aviation/space buff. A lot of A & S is machinery (planes & capsules on display) and you can view a lot of that in a short time. I find AH more thought-provoking--but I'm a 30ish female!

Do the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near Dulles. You can get a bus at the A & S mall museum for about $8 RT. Itsa wonderful!!!

MisterNice

Thanks Snickers. Another question I had, are you allowed to take pictures in these museums?
And are you available to give personal tours yourself? ;-)


[This message has been edited by doctall41 (edited Mar 15, 2004).]

Yes (there are some pictures from the Air and Space Museum in there. Username and Password: flyertalk)

Tours of the A&S Museum are free, and superb. Mine was around 90mins to 2hrs and the tour guide was extremely knowledgeable

I am pretty sure it is also the most visited museum in the world. Pretty impressive.

You should definitely be able to do two museums in one day. The American History museum had an exhibit on the Presidents the last time we were there. I believe it was to be a permanent exhibit. It was pretty neat. Among the exhibition�s highlights are Thomas Jefferson�s wooden lap desk on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence, the carriage Ulysses S. Grant rode to his second inauguration, the top hat worn by Abraham Lincoln the night of his assassination, George Washington�s battle sword and much more.

Oh, you wouldn't want my tour; my museum tolerance is around 60 minutes long lately. ("Yeah, yeah, seen it, okay, that's cool, move on . . .") The advantage is that it leaves plenty of time for collecting one's thoughts & impressions over a refreshing beverage.

There may be some flash photo restrictions in certain light-sensitive exhibits (I'm thinking of the Star Spangled Banner), but since the collections are the property of the American people, click away.

Sounds like me at the Grand Canyon.

"The advantage is that it leaves plenty of time for collecting one's thoughts & impressions over a refreshing beverage."

Now we're getting somewhere.. you sure you can't tour it with me??
;-)

Thanks for the help.

On a weekday, I would do Air & Space without question.

On a weekend, I would do a series of smaller museums and hit all of the outdoor stuff. Air & Space gets VERY crowded to the point where it's almost hard to walk around.

If I had to do only one, I would do the new air & space museum annex, since I have not yet seen it, and I have seen all of the mall museums. My job is in the field of historical research, and I LOVE the history museum, so if there was no new museum, I would go there. I found the main Air & Space museum a little disappointing. I guess I found a lot of the exhibits to be focusing on the interest level of a younger crowd than me. There was a lot of OH, WOW stuff there to look a briefly, but not a lot to ponder -- and it was too noisy and too crowded. In other words, I learned a lot more about the Wright Brothers and the construction of their first airplanes by watching the recent PBS documentary than I did by actually seeing the real thing. I am an auditory learner, so I like to attend lectures, and I don't think the Air & Space museum has many of those.

As you may have heard, there are lots of Smithsonian museums and you could spend all year seeing everything. What museum floats your boat depends on who you are. While lots of people picked Air & Space, not everybody digs airplanes strung up with baling wire from the ceiling (my daughters didn't dig it). American History has the most variety. Natural History is for you if you like dinosaur bones and pretty rocks.