1/20/11 - House GOP Lists $2.5 Trillion in Spending Cuts, including ...
National Endowment for the Arts - $167.5 million annual savings!
In case you haven’t heard … President Obama’s new budget includes a big increase for the Smithsonian Institution. The museum complex will receive a record-breaking $797.4 million in 2010. Apparently, $761.4 million in 2009 just wasn’t enough. With so much of our money going here, it got us thinking - is the Smithsonian Institute fair and balanced?
To answer this question, we visited the popular Portraits of the Presidents exhibit at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in downtown Washington and snapped a few pictures. The pictures speak for themselves, and the cliche “one picture is worth a thousand words” definitely applies.
According to the Smithsonian:
"The presidency has been a major focus of American political life ... presidential portraits have from the outset attracted popular interest. ... It is no surprise, then, that presidential portraiture has been a major collecting concern at the National Portrait Gallery ever since it opened its doors in 1968. ... In the selection of portraits on view here, some are more sophisticated and striking [might those be the Democrat presidents??] than others [hmmm … Republican presidents]; some are quite rare or altogether unique; some are calculated to impress us with their gravity while others are warmly intimate. ....”
Really? Here is what we saw.
President Clinton
It is easy to see why the recently unveiled President Clinton portrait has been generating a lot of attention lately. The portrait is quite “striking” ... occupying nearly an entire wall from floor to ceiling!
Portraits of Presidents Bush 41 and 43 are standard size and hang together on a wall that adjoins the Clinton wall.
President Reagan
A portrait of President Reagan is standard size and hangs alone on a wall that adjoins the Clinton wall (apologies for the blurry photo).
President Clinton’s portrait is on the far left (no pun intended) side of the photo.
A portrait of President Carter, like Clinton, occupies nearly an entire wall from floor to ceiling.
A portrait of President Nixon hangs on the opposite side of the Carter wall. The Nixon portrait is quite small (we were unable to find a smaller presidential portrait in the gallery) and dimly lit. Probably just a coincidence … Or maybe this is what they meant by “warmly intimate.”
The portraits of Presidents Carter and Nixon hang on opposite sides of the same wall.
A portrait of President Kennedy, like Presidents Clinton and Carter, occupies nearly an entire wall from floor to ceiling. The Kennedy portrait is brightly lit even though it is located just a few feet from the Nixon portrait.
A portrait of President Eisenhower is standard size, like fellow Republicans Bush and Reagan, and shares a wall.
So is the Portraits of the Presidents exhibit at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery fair and balanced? You be the judge.
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Truth of the matter is that all democratic President's you mention need the inflation in order to be mentioned with most of the other Presidents. The record of the republican presidents speak for themselves in history. Whereas, folks like Carter need all the inflation (bud pun) that they can get. What was Carter's contribution to the US once again??
ReplyDeleteIncredulous! I think that this story should do for MMX FLEX what the "blue dress" story did for Drudge. I for one am totally OUTRAGED!!!
ReplyDeleteNo picture of LBJ? Where is the portrait of him done by Peter Hurd?
ReplyDeleteThe one Lyndon Johnson said, when he saw it,.."That's the ugliest thing I ever saw."
Carter's larger than Reagan's or either Bush's? Just in terms of Reagan and GWB having two terms that makes absolutely no sense. Clinton's shouldn' be so big when he really, historically speaking, didn't do too much compared to Reagan or some of the others.
ReplyDeleteGiven Eisenhower was not only the builder of the National Highway system but the General who led our victory in Europe, not to mention that Eisenhower himself was a painter which an art gallery might care to notice, his portrait being small in comparison is disgusting.
JFK's being big I can see because he was an iconic President who was assassinated in office. However, the others being that big in comparison to Ike Eisenhower and to Reagan who busted a recession and won the Cold War (George HW Bush helped because he saw that through from 1989-1991, yet Reagan did a lot of the heavy lifting) is a total joke.
I can see Nixon being small because of Watergate, but in pure history terms, wouldn't that mean he should get a standard portrait at least, because he is historically significant? Nixon ended the war in Vietnam, was in office when the US landed on the moon, and opened relations with the People's Republic of China. PLUS he was in a huge scandal. Like it or not that is history.
Outrageous- this is just terrible. This is just another example of Demonrats being psychotic narrcissists. Osama obama's pic should be hung in a closet but will probably be the side of the building. Shame.
ReplyDeleteapparently the size of the portrait is inverse proportion to historical significance and direct proportion to size of ego
ReplyDeleteThe bigger ones will just burn longer...
ReplyDeleteIt's impractical to size the pictures according to relative importance. Reagan's would have to be the size of Mt. Everest while Carter's would be sub-atomic.
ReplyDeleteI think this has more to do with the narcissism of the Democrats than any sort of plot. Probably the president or the president's family donate the paintings. Reagan's family, confident in his well-deserved legacy as the man who defeated Communism, send a normal-sized portrait. Jimmy Carter, who knows he's contributed nothing to our nation or our world but misery and oppression, sent a very large portrait. Bush, who's known for not being terribly arrogant, sent a normal sized portrait, while Clinton, who has a lot to compensate for ("think of a thumb" was the term Monica Lewinski is on tape using to her friend Linda Tripp), sent in a massive portrait.
ReplyDeleteWelcome Drudge readers. It is true that some presidents had bigger impacts than others (Gerald Ford?) but nobody should be surprised by any art organization literally marginalizing Republicans. The Clinton picture looks like it was made with tissue paper, and Kennedy was painted in ten minutes. Why don't they paint a bulls-eye around Nixon and be done with it?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like we're not even going to have to wait until dear leader leaves office before his portrait is displayed at the National Portrait Gallery (paid for with our tax dollars, of course).
ReplyDeletehttp://www.traditionalvalues.org/read/3525/obamas-hope-portrait-to-hang-in-national-portrait-gallery/
Obama in his own words/lyrics - "I am the tax man"
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0M__0Z1pjg
Hey ... this is just one of the reasons that he's gotta tax you!
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ReplyDeleteThanks for the trackbacks Ann (www.anncoulter.com) and iowntheworld (www.iowntheworld.com).
ReplyDeleteThe image of the arrival of Obama’s portrait (www.iowntheworld.com) is classic!
It's who you get as an artist..Clinton got chuck close..chuck always paints big...that's the only way his art works..If Bush wanted a big portrait he should have hired Chuck.
ReplyDeleteHere's the guage use to determine portrait size.
ReplyDeleteAll their kahonas are the same size in each picture. That is the true size is inversely proportioned to the size of the portrait.
The ultra stupid and insipid clinton and carter shouldn't even be allowed to have a picture there. America hating carter and jerk-off clinton are two of the most disgusting piles of garbage on earth, closely followed by their lord-god Obozo.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, the portrait exhibit is fair and balanced. It is quite fair to display accurately the high esteem in which liberals hold themselves. Accordingly, it is balanced by the humility of the conservatives. You would think, however, that the libs would be deeply embarrassed by such blatant, unflattering self-promotion. Alas, no. This, too, is the measure of the man. -- ProlifeMama
ReplyDeleteI once saw a display of presidential potraits at the Carter center in Atlanta. Clinton's portrait was ugly and the caption was all about Clinton's indiscretions and impeachment! What a hoot! There seems to be no love lost between those two losers!
ReplyDeleteGeez, I can only assume BO's portrait will cover an entire side of the building.
ReplyDeleteBought and paid for Liberal/Democrat/Anti-American Citizen Taxpayer paid for "institution" that conveys a PARTISAN POLITICAL POINT 24/7.
ReplyDeleteThis story is OUTRAGEOUS and the Smithsonian shold be held accountable for its blatant disregard for fairness and/or historical accuracy.
PATHETIC COWARDS!
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. by Mark Twain.
ReplyDeleteAn apt proverb for flexing political muscle !!
Great Presidents don't need to be portayed as larger than life as thier accomplishments are imposing. Anyway, the contrast in portrait size, partisan as it is, will serve to diminish the reputation of the Smithsonian.