DC By the Book

Excerpt: Unlike his street, where the small bungalows and square yards were almost all the same, the houses on Seventh Street were old two-story ones, jammed together like mismatched puzzle pieces. Some had porches in front and leaning garages in the back. Others had only a narrow patch of yard with a gravel driveway between them. Scattered along the street were some neighborhood businesses that looked as if they’d been there for years: A gas station on the corner. An auto repair shop with a couple of rusty cars in its side lot. . . . There wasn’t much traffic for a Saturday morning. A few city buses drove by without stopping.

Excerpt: He wandered slowly down the gravel alleyway toward the building. It was your typical brick garage with one of those big corrugated metal doors. Someone had painted the address over the door, but they hadn’t done a very good job of it. Long drips ran down the bricks, so the numbers almost looked as if they were melting. Since none of the address was visible from the street, Arthur wasn’t sure why anybody had bothered. On the far side of the garage, Arthur noticed another door. It had a real doorknob, at least . . . As he stepped over broken bits of concrete and coils of rusted wire to reach the side door, he tried not to think about how dangerous this all seemed: An out-of-the-way garage. A run-down neighborhood. Nobody around.

Excerpt: All Arthur saw at first was a wall of gold and silver. . . . It looked like a shimmering shrine inside the garage, like something you’d see on a Hollywood movie set or in an Egyptian temple or something. There were glittering tables, silver pillars, gilt pedestals, and throne-like chairs. Arthur couldn’t believe his eyes. Radiant gold-and-silver objects filled almost half of the room—the pieces piled so high they nearly touched the low ceiling lights. It was unreal. Arthur wondered if he was having a hallucination or some kind of crazy dream. Was he really standing inside Mr. Hampton’s garage in Washington, D.C.? He closed his eyes and opened them again just to check and see if everything was still there. It was. And that’s when he noticed something else. There were wings everywhere. They were attached to the sides of the tables, the backs of the chairs, the pedestals and the pillars. Everything he could see had its own pair of sparkling wings. . . . Arthur might have stayed frozen in the same spot forever, lost in the vision of the shimmering world . . .

Excerpt: As the crowd entered the room behind him, there was a soft gasp. Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. Mr. Hampton’s masterpiece looked far better, far more beautiful, than he remembered. In the darkened room, the red chair Arthur had found for Mr. Hampton years before filled the center like a radiant throne. Around it, the foil-wrapped tables and chairs and pedestals and pillars sparkled in the spotlights. Metallic wings stretched outward. Stars caught the light. And at the top of it all—above the glittering thrones and tables and pillars—was the small cardboard sign Arthur wanted everyone to see: FEAR NOT. For a long time, Arthur stood at the side of the room watching as the museum guest filed in. He noticed how they spoke in hushed whispers as they entered the darkened space, and how they stepped forward to look at the intricate pieces more closely—then back, as if trying to grasp the scene from a distance. Forward and back. Forward and back. Like a dance. --------James Hampton's artwork is part of the permanent display of the museum. It is located in the Folk Art and Self-Taught Art Galleries on the First Floor.

Excerpt: He’d been to the national art museum only once, on a school field trip in elementary school. All he could remember was the huge gold picture frames and the marble steps. It had been like a palace. He couldn’t believe Hampton’s collection of foil-covered art would be in a place like that. -------The National Collection of Fine Arts is now called the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It moved to its present location in the Old Patent Building on F St in 1968. The National Collection of Fine Arts was partially housed in the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1960s, but the marble steps are an iconic feature of the Old Patent Building.