Site: The International Gallery at the Ripley Center

One of the advantages of working down on the mall is that I can just drop in at some of the museums and galleries in my spare time. And one of the under-visited gems that the Smithsonian has to offer is the International Gallery at the Ripley Center. The Ripley Center is literally hidden away, tucked underneath one of the SI gardens, between the Freer-Sackler and the African Art Museum. The entrance is a nondescript kiosk between the Smithsonian Castle and the Freer Mansion. But down below the gardens and the skylights, the International Gallery hosts a wide variety of art exhibits from the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Services that can't be seen anywhere else in the DC area.

The exhibits are all small and do not include the major works of art that find their way to the American Art Museum or the National Gallery, but they frequently offer a look at a more off-beat group of artists and works. Some recent shows include: "Piano 300-Celebrating Three Centuries of People and Pianos", "In the Spirit of Martin" a collection of works inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the exhibit that sparked this piece "In the Russian Tradition: A Historic Collection of 20th-Century Russian Paintings", this exhibit brings together 45 paintings from before the December Revolution until after the fall of the Soviet Union. While I have to admit that few of the paintings would challenge for a place in the traditional canon of modern art, there are some marvelous works that show that even under the heavy hand of the Soviet Union, lots of beautiful art was created in Russia.