I have been to the Portrait Gallery several times and still love it. Located in Chinatown - Gallery Place, the small museam has only three floors of temporary and permanent exhibitions.

I especially love the Hip-Hop and Contemporary Portraiture exhibit and the Katharine Hepburn photos. The exhibit of posters has a self-portrait of Kurt Vonnegut, my favorite author, that I had never seen before. Sadly, the exhibit of famous love letters that I saw on my birthday is no longer there. (I guess love really is fleeting.) 

On Saturday I went to the third floor for the first time to see the collection of Contemporary and Modern art. It was  so interesting and inspiring to see  all of the art that  wouldn't normally be considered portraiture included in the gallery. Some of my favorite pieces were actually sculptures: a wall-sized neon map of the United States made out of televisions, a driftwood horse, and a life-sized manequin of a woman reading tabloids and eating icecream. 

The beauty of the gallery is that it's free which makes it easy to pop in and out without the hassle or expense of lots of other art museams of equal quality. Last weekend I went to the Portrait Gallery because I had an hour to kill before a movie started across the street.

As an aside, this series of events marked a small win in the age old battle of the sexes. I convinced my boyfriend to see the Sex and the City movie. He agreed, begrudgingly, on the condition that I pay. (Success!) I am pretty sure he was more impressed with the art than with Sarah Jessica Parker's performance, but so was I.

That's the thing that I love about DC. You can get your culture and your pop culture all in one afternoon.