Around Town: Last Chance for Exhibits in August

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IN WEATHER LIKE THIS, venturing to a museum or gallery might leave you sweaty, but it comes with sweet rewards: great exhibitions and air conditioning.

August is usually when the city's museums and galleries prep for new shows, so here's a quick list of some exhibitions you should check out soon before they close.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
» Great Britons: Treasures from the National Portrait Gallery, London: Do you have tickets to Thursday's sold-out D.C. United-L.A. Galaxy game and fear that David Beckham's bad ankle will keep him from playing at RFK? Never fear, the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery has a video portrait of the soccer star in bed. It's all part of the "Great Britons" exhibition, featuring portraits from the Smithsonian's counterpart in London. You'll find everyone from Tony Blair to Oscar Wilde to Queen Elizabeth I, pictured at right.
Organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London; exhibition closes Sept. 3

» Harry Benson — Being There: At the end of the "Great Britons" exhibition, you'll be greeted by a giant portrait of then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush taken in 2000 by photographer Harry Benson. In it, a clearly more youthful Bush sits in the governor's mansion in Austin with one fist clinched and a confident smirk the American public has not seen in quite some time. A photo of Richard Nixon resigning sits within view. Amid all the show-stopping photographs of the Beatles and American presidents, don't miss the haunting image of the reclusive Greta Garbo swimming off Antigua or a grieving father sitting at National Airport, holding an American flag after his son's funeral at Arlington National Cemetery in 1971.
Organized by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; exhibition closes Sept. 3

» National Portrait Gallery, Old Patent Office Building, 8th and F streets NW. Hours: 11:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m. (Gallery Place-Chinatown)

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
» American Treasures of the Library of Congress: After a decade on display and 2.5 million visitors, the Library of Congress' long-term display of some of its most prized treasures — like an early rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, the first motion picture and the first baseball card — will be closing up shop. The rotating display was meant to commemorate the reopening of the LOC's historic Thomas Jefferson Building — its main reading room is pictured at left — which had been closed for major renovations.
Exhibition closes Aug. 18

» Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building, Independence Avenue at 1st Street SE. Hours: Mon-Sat, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Capitol South)

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
» Claude Lorrain — The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings From the British Museum: Lorrain, also known as Claude Gellee, spent most of his time in Rome, drawing and painting ancient ruins and landscapes, becoming one of best landscape artists and draftsmen of his time. The Lorrain exhibition, the first show of the artist's work in the United States in more than two decades, closes after this weekend.
Organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in association with the British Museum; exhibition closes Aug. 12.

» Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945: In the wake of World War I, the political boundaries of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires were broken, and as a result, so too were social and artistic boundaries. While much has been studied about notions of art and modernity in Germany between the world wars, across Central Europe in places like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, photography and photomontage were methods used by artists big and small to depict their changing social landscape.
Sponsored by the Central Bank of Hungary; exhibition closes Sept. 3.

» National Gallery of Art, Constitution Avenue at 4th Street NW, 202-737-4215. Hours: Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. (Archives-Navy Mem'l)

Pictured at right: Hungarian photographer Kata Kalman's "Erno Weisz, Factory Worker" (1932)