Patent Verdict: 'Awesome'

Visitors view works by Marc Dennis, left, and James Seward on the crowded opening day of the Old Patent Office Building. (Photos By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post)

In front of Gilbert Stuart's famed oil of our first president, arm extended, sat "George Washington" himself, hands in his pockets. He had just come from his estate at Mount Vernon with his wife, Martha, who suggested that the portrait makes her husband "look rather grim." Washington, whose real name is William Sommerfield and who is the "official impersonator of George Washington," looked a bit peeved by that comment. "The presidency has been hard on her," he noted.

"Harriet Tubman" stood by a tiny photograph of Harriet Tubman. She smiled and nodded and carried a Gucci purse under her dark robes and shook the hand of Chris Noth of "Sex and the City," who is not an official historic figure just yet. Tubman, speaking through Angelica Huesca, a Baltimore actress, said her favorite portraits were of Madonna and Michael Jackson.

"Andy Warhol" was hiding. He was "shy," he explained, before asking Robin Richard, who had just come from Eastern Market, if he could film her for eight minutes. She said okay, but then he excused himself: "I have to go look for some soup cans." His "pseudonym" was Anthony Chavez, and he was really from Baltimore, and he pronounced the Old Patent Office Building totally "awesome."

Warhol might have been intrigued to see the spread of Polaroids at Pete and Alison Duval's table, where the Silver Spring couple gave a demonstration of the photographic emulsion transfer process -- but it was blocked by hordes of curious visitors. The Duvals are freelance photographers who usually compete with the press photographers who yesterday were snapping their picture.

Inside the museum, their big competition was the larger-than-life Mr. Imagination, who in the next room wore a cummerbund, hat and coat all sewn with bottle caps. He showed the gaggle of little girls who watched him, mouths agape, how to make necklaces of bottle caps and colored feathers.

Arlington residents Joe and Mikel Witte said they were looking forward most to "a famous twig sculptor": Lucious Webb, who in the Luce Center was making what looked like a tiny boat out of twigs he had collected.

Mandy and Willa Trifiatis came from Falls Church and lingered at the glass windows of the conservation lab, where they saw conservator Martin Kotler clean the back of a huge gilt frame (which had once held a watercolor of polar bears) in order to look for the signature of the frame-maker.

In the hall outside the Luce Center, Pachter, the Portrait Gallery director, beamed as he took the arm of "Marilyn Monroe," her white dress fluttering, and posed for a photograph to mark the occasion. As the two stood for their very own portrait, the faces in the neighboring "20th Century Americans" gallery stared them down.

Speaking of the difficulty of curating such a collection -- and of choosing just the right figures to bring back to life -- Pachter said, "The question is, whom do we notice in our society?"