Despite my exhaustion from the day prior, I hopped back on a train on Sunday afternoon. This time it was the Metro Orange Line, and my destination was the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian for special tour sponsored by the local DC Alumni Association.

I arrived a little early, though, in the hopes of ducking into the National Gallery's East Building to see the new Andy Goldsworthy installation in its final days of construction. I've been a fan of his work ever since I stumbled across a copy of Stone in my local bookstore in high school, but I've never seen any of his work close-up. (Few people have, for that matter, since a lot of what he does is solitary and short-lived.) I liked what I saw - the domes built out of Virginia slate were almost complete, and only the occasional bucket or work boot was still lying around. Its a shame we won't be allowed to walk around them.

Afterwards I met up with Julie, Matt, Lizzi, Jason and Cris to tour the Museum of the American Indian. First we watched an introductory video, and then spent a few hours wandering through exhibits called Our Universes and Our Histories.

With the seemingly impossible task of representing every native tribe in the western hemisphere, the museum packs a lot of stuff from wildly diverse cultures into a very small space. Sometimes I wished they had gone into more depth about just a few tribes instead of trying to cover just the surface of all of them.

Caution: Winding walkways, dim lighting, tropical temperatures, and plenty of glowing, animated multimedia content makes the exhibits hypnotically overwhelming. Enjoy it in small doses.