Surrounded by so much history, the Art Gallery wasn't high on my place to see. My wife had this high on her list, so off we went. Well, I was wrong. We planned this for our afternoon viewing, to avoid the heat. I could spend a week here and still not see it all.
There is a guide at the information desk which lists the must-see art in the building, from the DaVinci to Picasso. For someone with a limited amount of time, this could be great. We were dealing with this in a more leisurely manner, so the people running in, stopping in front of a picture just long enough to take a picture on the digital camera and then running out were a bit of a distraction. But there is so much great art here that we quickly realized that we couldn't see the pieces on the must list. We were just taking too long with all the other art to make it to all of them. Once we came to this realization, about an hour into our visit here, we decide to just see French Impressionists, since that is my favorite. We still didn't get through everything. I briefly lost my wife when I got stopped by Mary Cassat's "Girl in a Blue Chair". I've seen pictures of this painting, but seeing the brush strokes and the detail in the painting just froze me for a good long time.
I didn't know that I could spend a whole visit to Washington here, but I know I will plan for more time here in our next visit. Our visit only scratched the surface of what is here. We have a plate with a Picasso on it that my wife bought in the gift shop to remind us both of how great this was.