Behold, the power of art!

Public schools were out for a professional study day today, so I decided to take the day off of work and take the eldest to the National Gallery of Art.  The current special exhibition at the NGA is a selection of J.M.W Turner paintings.  Mr Turner is one of my top five favorite painters – Renior, Rembrandt, C.W. Peal, Turner, and a tie between Alexander and Ross for keeping my saturdays entertained – so this was to be a treat to myself, as well as an excuse to run the hyper one tired over the course of a morning/mid afternoon.  We’re about halfway through the Turner exhibition, when I hear a voice I vaguely recognize behind me.  It turned out to be Simon Schama, who just happens to be one of my favorite authors.

I’ve read two of Mr. Schama’s books:  Rough Crossings, and Power of Art (Turner is featured in the latter, in fact) so far, with plans to read more as I can get my hands on more of them (A subtle hint for those who may be looking for birthday/christmas gift hints, wink wink).  Today, Mr. Schama was leading a class of his through the exhibition, so I waited until he let his students loose in the room, and walked over to him. I got to shake his hand and was able to talk to him for a few minutes before Li got too itchy and we had to move on before she started to act out.  Naturally I was not able to ask him all of the questions I would normally ask a favorite author, and was not able to get a picture of the two of us due to the stupid restrictions on taking pictures in the exhibit (both of which he’s probably grateful for ;) ), so no extras for this post.

Anway, today == win! That certainly doesn’t happen every day.