While many Georgetown students doubtlessly spent this summer backpacking through barren stretches of Central Asia and others kept busy idling by pools in The Gambia with boarding school friends, others (like myself) spent the bulk of the summer doing mind-numbing office work in the District. Aggravated by hordes of overzealous Presidential Classroom vermin and the syrupy summer air, we found ourselves consoled by a multitude of special exhibits at museums and art galleries. Harboring slight bitterness toward our globetrotting peers, we relished the fact they would never see these particular exhibits; we thought these air-conditioned outposts of culture would contain entirely new ones by the beginning of the school year. However, this is not the case: while a few of these exhibits may have already closed, many remain open through Labor Day weekend. Go, and take away my only source of consolation by viewing these exhibits before they vanish before your jetsetting eyes.
Unaware of the trend he would start when he ascended Everest for the first time 50 years ago, Sir Edmund Hillary bemoaned the fact that climbing Everest now has become less about “real mountaineering” and more about “having people pay $65,000 and then be led up the mountain.” Fortunately, if you hurry you don’t have to climb or pay anything to hear Hillary’s story, because “Sir Edmund Hillary: Everest and Beyond” at The National Geographic Society’s Explorer Hall pays homage to his life through Sept. 1. From his early days in New Zealand tending his father’s beehives to his crowning achievement, it’s all there-and more. While containing all of the picturesque scenery you would expect from a National Geographic exhibit, it also boasts, rather impressively, a circular room containing panoramic views from the summit that Hillary himself took. Images of sherpas abound as well. Some of the equipment used on the historic climb is on display-including Hillary’s ice axe, rope, and some 50-year-old packets of rather suspicious “lemonade powder.”
On the off chance celebrations of aging mountaineers aren’t quite your thing, check out Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu. When thinking of how to spend your Labor Day weekend, I doubt the Library of Congress is the first thing that pops into your mind. But maybe that’s all about to change. Through Sept. 3, selections from 23 ancient manuscripts are on loan from Mali’s Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library. Written in Arabic, these manuscripts contain a largely untold history of Africa, and are coveted by historians. Millions of such manuscripts are tucked away in family collections throughout Mali, but the bulk remain untranslated. Go see this-you can even practice your classical Arabic, which I know you’ve been meaning to do.
You’ll have another weekend to make it to Marsden Hartley’s exhibit at the Phillips Collection, closing Sept. 7 after a three-month run. A turn of the century modernist, Hartley dabbled in the avant garde and spent a considerable amount of his adult life travelling and living in Europe before ultimately returning home to Maine. The exhibit showcases Hartley’s major works-from Berlin abstractions to vibrant still-lifes. He befriended Gertrude Stein in Paris and Kandinsky in Berlin, where he painted what are arguably his most interesting pictures. With the Phillips Collection’s close proximity to Georgetown, you have no excuse to not take a hiatus from partying and go.
National Geographic Explorers Hall is located at 7th & M St. N.W. Library of Congress is located at 101 Independence Ave, S.E. The Phillips Collection is located at 1600 21st St., N.W.
