Wonder & Rochambeau Statue, DC

On Christmas Eve we went into DC to visit the newly renovated Renwick Gallery. The WONDER exhibition is very cool and highly recommended. The exhibition closes between May and July 2016.

Photo by Patrick Jones. John Grade's Middle Fork, Renwick Gallery, DC.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Jennifer Angus, In the Midnight Garden, Renwick Gallery.

Yes, those are bugs in the photo above. A whole room in the Renwick features these critters. Other rooms allow visitors to see a woven sculpture suspended from the ceiling of the gallery depicting the energy waves from the tragic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami (you have to experience this by viewing the installation from the floor looking up) and a rainbow made up of nearly 60 miles of thread. The exhibition is likely to be one of the most Instagrammed spots in DC for the next few months.

After the Renwick we walked past the White House and through Lafayette Park. On a corner of the park is the Rochambeau Statue, created in 1902 by sculptor Fernand Hamar. Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, was a French military commander who aided America during the Revolutionary War, playing a key role in the Battle of Yorktown. While the top of the statue shows Rochambeau, the part that caught my eye was the lower portion showing Victory defending the American Eagle. There are other statues in the park, but this was the first time I had taken a closer look at this one, and I was interested to learn more about the statue in the National Park Service webpage linked above.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Fernand Hamar's Rochambeau Statue.

Photo by Patrick Jones. Victory and the American Eagle. 24 Dec 2015.