Ginger Rogers bust, sculptor’s letter displayed at National Portrait Gallery

From the Arts section of this Sunday's Washington Post:

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/ginger-rogers-bust-sculptors-letters-displayed-at-national-portrait-gallery/2014/10/30/b78dad64-5a04-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html[/url]

In August 1942, Ginger Rogers received a neatly typed letter from a Japanese internment camp.

“Your head in marble was finally sent off to you,” the letter began. A few paragraphs later, the writer concluded, somewhat hastily: “May it go down thru the ages as a remembrance of a lovely lady of our times. The circumstances of its making was strange, I guess somewhat symbolical too.”

The letter was signed: “Your devoted fan, Isamu Noguchi.”

What the acclaimed sculptor had completed at the Hollywood star’s request was a bust in pink Georgia marble, complete with a modernist take on her upswept pompadour. Noguchi was a master of expressive simplicity. And true to form, his appraisal of the bust’s creation left quite a lot out.

DUers in the D.C. area, as well as those coming for a visit, can step off the Metro at Gallery Place and visit the National Portrait Gallery, which is in the old patent office building together with the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

The National Portrait Gallery has quite a few professions represented among its subjects, not just presidents, and more than once has mounted exhibits on classic movie-related subjects (e.g., the history of the American musical).