Search

Begin New Search Journal The Objective Standard Publishing Institution The Objective Standard

181. The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
For ten years, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays ambled up to home plate and struck out. They were the worst team in Major League Baseball, averaging ninety-seven losses per season and finishing last in nine out of ten. They were, in short, the laughingstock of the league—not to mention late-night TV. In a 2003 episode of the Late Show with David Letterman, Roger Clemens read from the list of the “Top 10 Things Baseball Has Taught Me.” Checking in at number four: “The best practical joke? Tell a teammate they've been traded to the Devil Rays.” (p. 5) But the problem with the Devil Rays was not just that they always lost or that the entire league laughed at them. The team's owner was a notorious cheapskate with a volatile temper whose antics were so terrible that he turned the team's hometown against them. It would have been hard for things to get worse. Indeed, they got better—and Jonah Keri tells how in The Extra 2%: How Wall Street Strategies Took a Major League Baseball Team from Worst to First. The book starts like a typical Hollywood script, with a businessman playing the role of villain. Keri tells how Vincent J. Naimoli came to own the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and details the ways Naimoli was “the Wrong CEO” for the team. For one, Naimoli was a miser on the order of Ebenezer Scrooge, penny-pinching even at the price of employee productivity and happiness. Naimoli reused paper when writing memos, refused to buy Internet access for the office, and forced staff to bring a satchel of mail with them when traveling to a company branch (owing to the cost of stamps). And, as Keri says, “he was damn proud of it” (p. 34). Further, Naimoli took bids from dozens of vendors for everything, requiring them to purchase season tickets first, and then created enemies by pitting them against each other and negotiating for ever more price cuts without knowing when to quit (p. 36). He received a salvo of negative publicity for inviting the local high school band to play the national anthem and telling the kids at the last minute that “they would have to pay to get into the ballpark” (p. 39). And when attendance dropped in the wake of such actions, Naimoli instituted a crackdown on fans who brought in food from outside—turning gate agents and ushers into “unflinching supercops” and creating a miserable ballpark experience for many. As Keri shows, Naimoli's pursuit of wins on the baseball field was similarly shortsighted. Naimoli was adamant from the start that the Devil Rays make it to the playoffs within five years. “But,” says Keri, “five years was an unrealistic projection for an expansion baseball club in the Devil Rays' position” (p. 51)—even more so given the general manager who Naimoli chose, and kept, despite his poor performance. That general manager, Chuck LaMar, botched a number of important decisions. Keri points out that LaMar overlooked talent, paid too much for expensive veterans in hopes of meeting Naimoli's playoff aspirations, and “threw in preference for players with Florida connections, foolishly surmising that such connections would bring in lots more fans, even when the product on the field remained lousy” (p. 57). After nearly a decade of this sort of management, the Devil Rays had earned their reputations as perennial losers, and the ballclub was almost perfectly set up for a turnaround. In the typical Hollywood movie the Scrooge counterpart might have handed over the reins to someone unconcerned with money, but what happened in Tampa Bay was different and far more interesting. With the Devil Rays having hit rock bottom, three men—Stuart Sternberg, Matthew Silverman, and Andrew Friedman—bought Naimoli's stake. The ball club's new owners, hailing from Wall Street, certainly did not shun profits. In contrast to Naimoli, however, they devised a realistic, long-term plan for gaining them, making decisions along the way with their heads rather than their guts. . . .

182. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
In July of 2009, right after celebrating his company's ten-year anniversary, Tony Hsieh stood in a packed room. Seven hundred Zappos employees were cheering, and a “lot of them even had tears of happiness streaming down their faces” (p. 1). Hsieh had just surprised his employees with a special bonus after announcing the sale of Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion. Amazingly, this was the second time in just over ten years that Hsieh had sold a company for what amounted to roughly $100 million for each year he ran the business. But this second sale was a far happier occasion. In the autobiographical Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, Hsieh tells how he set out as a kid “to become the number one worm seller in the world,” ran a successful button business (among others) in elementary school, and eventually achieved happiness—while delivering it—through Zappos, an online shoe store. Hsieh starts by recounting a childhood spent searching for different ways to make money, observing what worked, and gaining many important lessons about business—his goal being to make enough money to do whatever he wanted when he grew up. Upon graduating from university, and after a short stint at Oracle, Hsieh put his mounting knowledge to use in a company called Link Exchange, which he started with a friend, Sanjay. “The idea behind Link Exchange,” says Hsieh, “was pretty simple.” If you ran a Web site, then you could sign up for our service for free. Upon signing up, you would insert some special code into your Web pages, which would cause banner ads to start showing up on your web site automatically. Every time a visitor came to your Web site and saw one of the banner ads, you would earn a credit. So, if you had a thousand visitors come to your Web site every day, you would end up earning five hundred credits per day. With those five hundred credits, your Web site would be advertised five hundred times across the Link Exchange network for free, so this was a great way for Web sites that didn't have advertising budgets to gain additional exposure for free. The extra five hundred advertising impressions left over would be for us to keep. The idea was that we would grow the Link Exchange network over time and eventually have enough advertising inventory to hopefully sell to large corporations. (p. 38) The value that Link Exchange offered to websites was immediately recognized, and the network grew at a breathtaking pace. Working around the clock, Hsieh and Sanjay answered e-mails and programmed. Only five months into the business, they were in a position to debate selling their company for $1 million—an offer they ultimately refused. . . .

183. My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
As a kid, I did not know much about Dick Van Dyke. But I certainly knew Bert, the chimney sweep who danced on the rooftops of London, rode through the countryside on a carousel horse with Mary Poppins, and laughed and laughed until he was so light he could do somersaults in the air or have tea on the ceiling. That guy was awesome. So when I heard about My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business: A Memoir, I smiled at what the title suggested: that the actor who gave me and countless others so much joy growing up has had a long life he looks back on with joy. In this new memoir, Van Dyke takes readers through his childhood, his service in World War II, his attempts to make a living doing what he loves, his memories making The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mary Poppins, and the many other things he has done since, including becoming a grandfather. As it turns out, Van Dyke weaves it all together nicely because from the start he loved to do one thing above all else: to entertain his friends, especially by making them laugh. Toward that end, Van Dyke says he “cultivated an arsenal of tricks [as a kid], whether it was a funny face, a pratfall, a joke, or all of the above” (p. 16). Just before Van Dyke turned seventeen, he landed a job as a part-time announcer for the local CBS radio outlet. Although his friends were making eleven bucks per week working at the market when the radio station was offering only eight, the pay disparity did not bother Van Dyke in the least. As he puts it: It was a dream job. In this little station, I did everything: I played records, read the news, gave the weather report, wrote my own commercials, and even sold my own advertising. If a breaking story came in from New York, I patched it in myself. Even if nothing big happened, each night was a thrilling adventure, an experience that made life seem large and important. I felt like I was at the center of the world, and in a town as small as Danville [Illinois], I was. (pp. 19–20) It would not be the last job Van Dyke would consider himself fortunate for getting. In fact, throughout the memoir, Van Dyke views even his worst experiences as fortunate in a way. Although he notes how painful they were—and getting evicted on the same day that your wife has a miscarriage most definitely qualifies—for the most part Van Dyke writes about each as being beneficial for having taught him something important. Notably, he does not let such experiences or the inner pain he felt when they happened steal much of the focus from the good experiences, such as filming The Dick Van Dyke Show and working with Mary Tyler Moore. . . .

184. From the Editor

Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Welcome to the Fall issue of The Objective Standard. Ten years have passed since Islamic barbarians slaughtered thousands of Americans on U.S. soil, and America has yet to name the primary enemies (the Iranian and Saudi regimes), let alone eliminate them. Instead, we have gone to war with lesser enemies, enemies that we could retaliate against without appearing sure of ourselves, without appearing morally certain, without seeming selfish. In his article “9/11 Ten Years Later: The Fruits of the Philosophy of Self-Abnegation,” John David Lewis examines the essence of this approach and what it's delivered so far. The opposite philosophy—that of cognitive clarity, moral certainty, and self-respect—is Ayn Rand's philosophy of rational egoism, the political principles of which should be guiding U.S. policy. In “Ayn Rand's Theory of Rights: The Moral Foundation of a Free Society,” I examine the essential aspects of her philosophy that give rise to her theory of rights, as against the theories of God-given, government-granted, and “natural” rights. Using the principle of rights as his standard of evaluation, Joshua Lipana examines and grades various components of Rep. Paul Ryan's “Path to Prosperity,” which, although rejected in the Senate, is perhaps the best plan put forth by an elected official to date about how to deal with America's financial crisis. The report card is telling. In an exclusive interview with TOS, John R. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, presents his ideas on the proper purpose of government and on various issues facing America today. This discussion will leave many TOS readers disappointed that Mr. Bolton has decided not to run for president. Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, is running for president, and his exclusive interview with TOS sheds important light on his view of the proper role of government and on what he would do if elected commander in chief. Where does he stand on domestic issues? How about foreign policy? Governor Johnson answers the tough questions here. In “The Mastermind behind SEAL Team Six and the End of Osama bin Laden,” Daniel Wahl surveys the history and principles that have given rise to the breathtaking competence of U.S. special operations forces, and finds that one man is primarily responsible. This, to borrow the words of Ragnar Danneskjöld, is a story of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force. Speaking of intelligence, ability, and heroism, sculptor Sandra J. Shaw explains, among other things, how she captures such qualities in the subjects of her works, including her bronze busts of Ayn Rand and Michelangelo. Several images accompany this lengthy interview, and Ms. Shaw's bust of Rand graces the current cover of the journal. Fuel for the soul from beginning to end. In addition to the above articles and interviews are film reviews of Captain America (directed by Joe Johnston) and Lifting King Kong (directed by Park Geon-yong) as well as book reviews of A Time to Betray by Reza Kahlili, Nomad by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Fear by Peter Godwin, The Bourgeois Virtues by Deirdre N. McCloskey, Gauntlet by Barbara Masin, Crashing Through by Robert Kurson, The Extra 2% by Jonah Keri, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, and My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business by Dick Van Dyke. Enjoy the articles, interviews, and reviews, and have a wonderful and productive fall. —Craig Biddle
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
America and Mexico

185. Letters and Replies

Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Is Health Insurance of “Monumental Importance”? To the Editor: I agree with the spirit of Paul J. Beard's article “ObamaCare v. the Constitution” [TOS, Summer 2011], but Matt Sissel's refusal to buy a service (health-care insurance) that “he neither needs nor wants” involves a major flaw. No one, young, middle-aged, or old, can predict when a catastrophic illness will strike. Those in our society who develop cancer, a stroke, or a major heart attack could easily be burdened with a medical bill of $50,000, $100,000, or more. Thus, health-care insurance is of monumental importance. The #1 reason for people filing for bankruptcy in America is that they cannot afford to pay their medical bills. Rade M. Pejic, M.D. Michigan City, Indiana Paul J. Beard II Replies: Catastrophic health insurance can be an important purchase if one wishes to insure against financial insolvency. But individuals face countless alternatives in life and must make their own decisions with respect to their personal contexts, resources, and goals. The government has no right and no constitutional authority to force anyone to purchase health insurance of any kind—nor to force anyone to bail out those who go bankrupt due to medical expenses. Individuals morally are and legally should be responsible for themselves. Paul J. Beard II Sacramento, California Would the Federal Government Permit States to Implement a Tax Credits Program? To the Editor: Although I found Michael A. LaFerrara's proposal in “Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?” to be enticing, the article did not explain how such a tax credit program could be implemented by particular states without first being permitted by the federal tax code. Is there already a provision in the code by which a state might provide its citizens a tax-credit plan such as LaFerrara's? If this plan does require new federal legislation, then activists need suggestions as to how to approach legislators to get something started toward enacting such legislation—a prospect, I suspect, that is as distant as initiating Dr. Bernstein's proposal (in “The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools,” TOS, Winter 2010–2011) to auction off the public schools. A. James Smith, Jr. Naples, Florida Mike LaFerrara Replies: The federal Department of Education states, “The responsibility for K–12 education rests with the states under the [U.S.] Constitution.”1 Consequently, public K–12 education is primarily funded by local and state taxes—91 percent according to the NEA.2 So a well-funded state program would be possible even without federal funding or congressional action. But there are ways that federal funding could be included. Because education dollars flow from taxpayers through the federal government and then back to the states via myriad programs,3 one possible way would be for state tax agencies simply to ignore the federal income tax outflow from its citizens—and thus avoid any need for federal tax reform—and apportion the inflow of federal dollars according to each taxpayer's Education Tax Liability and Average Attendance Cost. That said, federal dollars often flow to the states with “strings” or conditions attached, and such strings might prohibit apportionment of the monies as called for in my plan. In that case, states could seek exemptions from the conditions. If the federal regulatory agencies involved refused to grant exemptions, then state representatives could fight for them through Congress. Meanwhile, states could simply exclude federal dollars from the mix and still implement viable programs. It is worth noting that a transitional tax-credit program such as mine faces far less-onerous legal obstacles than summary, across-the-board privatization would. For example, New Jersey's constitution mandates that “The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of five and eighteen years” (Article VIII, Section 4). My plan would likely pass muster under such mandates, because the public schools would remain adequately funded for any child who would attend them. Dr. Bernstein's plan to auction off the government schools would ultimately require a constitutional amendment in New Jersey (and likely in other states), a daunting task in and of itself. Until our culture is philosophically advanced enough to support the summary abolition of government schools, a transitional plan structured to work within the existing legal context—and in conjunction with popular support for parental school choice—is our best bet. Such a program can get the ball rolling politically at the state level and, over time, with proven success, contribute to a cultural/political environment more conducive to complete privatization. It is also worth noting that tax credits or school auctions is not an either-or proposition. The ultimate goal of both proposals is the same. My plan could pave the way for Dr. Bernstein's: The more success Americans saw in transitioning to private education via the tax-credit program, the more open they would become to the idea of auctioning off government schools. Finally, I wish to emphasize that advocates of free markets in education should not balk at a plan just because it might encounter legal obstacles. To get from where we are to where we need to be, we will have to change some laws. The question is: Will we embrace a plan that can move us in the right direction? Michael A. LaFerrara Flemington, NJ Endnotes.
Topic:
Government

186. The American Right, the Purpose of Government, and the Future of Liberty

Author:
Craig Biddle
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Now that the 2012 GOP presidential nominee is almost certain to be either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich (who, in terms of policy and lack of principle, are practically indistinguishable), many on the right are turning their attention to the 2012 Senate races. And they are wise to do so. In the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans gained control of the House but failed to secure a majority in the Senate, leaving Democrats with 53 of 100 seats. Of the 33 Senate seats up for election in 2012, 21 are held by Democrats, 2 by independents. Republicans are likely to retain control of the House, and if they manage to gain control of the Senate as well, they will have the opportunity to repeal Obama Care, Dodd-Frank, and other disastrous laws and regulations, and to begin cutting federal spending. These are crucial short-term goals. But if we want to return America to the free republic it is supposed to be, we must do more than campaign and vote for Republicans. We must embrace and advocate the only principle that can unify our political efforts and ground them in moral fact. That principle pertains to the purpose of government. Government is an institution with a legal monopoly on the use of physical force in a given geographic area. What is the proper purpose of such an institution? Why, morally speaking, do we need it? The proper purpose of government is, as the Founding Fathers recognized, to protect people's inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Government fulfills this vital function, as Ayn Rand put it, by banning the use of physical force from social relationships and by using force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use. Insofar as an individual respects rights—that is, insofar as he refrains from assault, robbery, rape, fraud, extortion, and the like—a proper government leaves him fully free to act on his own judgment and to keep and use the product of his effort. Insofar as an individual violates rights—whether by direct force (e.g., assault) or indirect force (e.g., fraud)—a proper government employs the police and courts as necessary to stop him, to seek restitution for his victims, and/or to punish him. Likewise for international relations: So long as a foreign country refrains from using (or calling for) physical force against our citizens, our government properly leaves that country alone. But if a foreign country (or gang) attacks or calls for others to attack us, our government properly employs our military to eliminate that threat. As Thomas Jefferson summed up, a proper government “shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”In order to begin moving America toward good government, we must explicitly embrace this principle, and we must demand that politicians who want our support explicitly embrace it as well. To do so, however, we must understand what the principle means in practice, especially with respect to major political issues of the day, such as “entitlement” programs, corporate bailouts, “stimulus” packages, and the Islamist assault on America. . . .
Topic:
Government and Islam
Political Geography:
America

187. The Assault on Abortion Rights Undermines All Our Liberties

Author:
Ari Armstrong and Diana Hsieh
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Surveys the expanding efforts to outlaw abortion in America, examines the facts that give rise to a woman's right to abortion, and shows why the assault on this right is an assault on all our rights
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
America

188. The Patience of Jobs

Author:
Daniel Wahl
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
In 1997, John Lilly went to hear Steve Jobs speak in Building 4 of Apple's headquarters, taking a seat in the auditorium among many of his colleagues. Credit: Matthew Yohe “It was a tough time at Apple,” he remembers. “[W]e were trading below book value on the market—our enterprise value was actually less than our cash on hand. And the rumors were everywhere that we were going to be acquired.” But Jobs seemed excited. He told the employees gathered there that they were going to turn around the company. He told them why he thought the company “sucked” and why in the future it would be great. Then someone asked about Michael Dell's suggestion that Apple shut down and return its cash to shareholders. “Fuck Michael Dell,” replied Jobs. Lilly was flabbergasted. Jobs continued: “If you want to make Apple great again, let's get going. If not, get the hell out.” While Jobs was alive, few people thought of him as a patient man. Indeed, his own biographer concluded that “patience was never one of his virtues,” and there were understandable grounds for this view. Lilly recalls, for example, that soon after Jobs returned to Apple he made clear that he would not put up with any employee who was not with him and his vision for the company. One of the struggles we were going through when he came back was that Apple was about the leakiest organization in history—it had gotten so bad that people were cavalier about it. In the face of all those leaks, I remember the first all-company email that Steve sent around after becoming interim CEO . . . [H]e talked in it about how Apple would release a few things in the coming week, and a desire to tighten up communications so that employees could know more about what was going on—and how that required respect for confidentiality. That mail was sent on a Thursday; I remember all of us getting to work on Monday morning and reading mail from Fred Anderson, our then-CFO, who said basically: “Steve sent [an email] last week, he told you not to leak, we were tracking everyone's mail, and [four] people sent the details to outsiders. They've all been terminated and are no longer with the company.” This was just a single instance of Jobs showing an “intolerance or irritability with anything that impedes or delays”—the dictionary definition of impatience. But there were countless others, and although Jobs's intolerance may have shocked employees new to Apple, it didn't surprise those who remembered how Jobs had acted in earlier years. Back then, Jobs was also famously unwilling to put up with anyone who was not actively adding to the creation of products he envisioned and wanted to use. Then, too, he didn't want to waste his time on anything that was of secondary importance to him—and he didn't want people on his payroll wasting their time on such things either. . . .

189. An Interview with Still-Life Painter Linda Mann

Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
I recently spoke with Linda Mann about how she became a painter, the nature of still lifes, and how she makes pumpkins so intriguing. This interview includes images of several of her paintings. Her full portfolio, including details of the paintings found herein, can be seen at her website, www.lindamann.com, or by appointment. —Craig Biddle Craig Biddle: Linda, thank you for taking time away from the canvas to chat with me about your work. Linda Mann: It's my pleasure. CB: Having tried my hand at painting, I've concluded that great painters fall into the same category as great pianists. They're superhuman. LM: [Laughing] CB: Seriously, though, creating beautiful, engaging, fascinating works on canvas is an extremely difficult process, and I have several questions about it in relation to your work. But let me begin with a few preliminaries. How and when did you become an artist? LM: In some ways, I've always been an artist. Ever since I can remember, I've been drawing and painting—before I even really knew what being an artist meant. I took great pleasure in drawing everything around me—there were never enough paper and pencils for me! In school, I took all the art classes I could and thought I would pursue a career as an artist. But in high school I became discouraged, because what was being taught was largely modern or abstract art. I didn't understand the point of it and began to think that if that was art, that wasn't what I had in mind. When it came time for me to decide what to study in college, after much debating, I chose industrial design instead of art. It seemed to combine aesthetics and the rationality that I found utterly lacking in modern art. Soon after I got my degree, however, I discovered that I actually wasn't that good at it because my heart wasn't really in it. Over the years, I went from one design field to another—from industrial design to interior design to graphic design. I was always dissatisfied. Finally, I ended up in fashion design. While I was sketching costumes at a museum exhibit one afternoon, it struck me how much I'd always loved to draw. That was where my heart was. At that moment I decided to pursue fine arts again. I thought I could figure out a way to avoid the modern art that so discouraged me. I took some classes at the San Francisco Academy of Art and then, after I moved to Seattle, at The Academy of Realist Art. I studied off and on there, taking classes in traditional drawing and painting techniques, anatomy, and portraiture. Most of my learning was actually done studying old art technique books from the turn of the last century. I found that the majority of recent art textbooks were emphasizing modern art and not the classical methods that I wanted to learn. CB: So before you turned back to fine art, you designed fashion? Did you create any designs that went to market? LM: No, I didn't get that far. I was studying pattern-making, draping, sewing, and illustration. I had not gotten so far as to actually produce anything. CB: So that was school only, not a career spell. LM: Exactly. CB: Given the various kinds of paintings that an artist might choose to create—portraits, figures, landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, and so on—why have you chosen to focus on still lifes? What's so great about still lifes, as it were? LM: Something about still lifes is very intimate. Everybody is familiar with a tabletop with things on it—it's right in front of you. Landscapes are the world at large, out there; a portrait is involved with a person's character, and complex issues of psychology, which aren't what I'm mostly interested in. In a still life, the focus is on light and how we see. In this way, still-life painting seems to be more about epistemology than any other kind of painting. It says, “The world exists and I can know it.” A still life is like a little world more than any other kind of painting. It suits me to be able to contemplate this piece of my world in front of me—and it's available for study because it's up close and personal. . . .

190. Sanctum Sanctorum: The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Author:
Lee Sandstead
Publication Date:
12-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Objective Standard
Institution:
The Objective Standard
Abstract:
Author's note: An extensive gallery of original photography of the National Gallery of Art and its superb collection can be found here. If, like me, you hold that art is a necessity of ardent living, then experiencing art is one of the most crucial aspects of your life. And just as food is not meant only to be looked at in magazines but eaten—so too paintings and sculptures are not meant merely to be looked at in books, but devoured in person. This requires visiting museums, where most great art is housed. Photo credit: Lee Sandstead My favorite museum, after years of travel and thousands of hours spent in museums, is the West Building of the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C. Although there are larger museums with bigger collections—most notably the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City—the NGA has a first-rate collection, a top-notch preservation policy, and a spectacular architectural setting. In America, museums on the East Coast have the strongest collections. Those such as the NGA, Met, and Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston—recipients of the generosity of America's 19th- and early-20th-century collector-industrialists—contain the largest, most-diverse group of masters and masterpieces. Museum collections in the western and southern parts of the country tend to consist more of second-tier artists and artworks. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for instance, is a well-endowed museum with a large but relatively weak collection. It has no original Vermeers, merely a copy of one. Likewise, its A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros is not the original by 19th-century master William Bouguereau, but rather a much smaller reproduction done mostly by his assistants. Although the Getty does have a Raphael, it is a minor, early portrait, rather than one of his celebrated Madonnas. The museum's Canaletto is not one of his giant panoramas of Venice, but a minor painting of the Arch of Constantine. By contrast, the NGA has four Vermeers, five Raphaels, and nine paintings by Sir Peter Paul Rubens; no West-Coast museum comes close to having masterworks on this scale. Leonardo da Vinci, Ginevra de' Benci, ca. 1474/1478. Housed at the NGA, this is the only painting by da Vinci in the United States. Although only in his early twenties when he painted Ginevra de' Benci, Leonardo was at his innovative best in this painting, placing the sitter in an outdoor setting, positioning the body in a three-quarter pose, and using a new medium—oil painting. Photo credit: Lee Sandstead. Created by an act of Congress in 1937, the NGA was formed largely from the donated collections of Andrew Mellon and Samuel Kress, and it features a robust collection of Renaissance, Baroque, rococo, neoclassical, Romantic, and American art. It houses the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the United States and important works of several masters, including Rembrandt, Boucher, Fragonard, David, and Bierstadt. . . .
Political Geography:
Uganda, United States, and Washington

Refine your search