07/05/11 For the last 2 weeks in June, I’ve been shooting Washington’s memorials, buildings and landmarks for a client who will be using the images for a new web design. It’s been a fun assignment and DC is a target-rich environment when it comes to outdoor sculpture. I thought I’d share some of these images here on SnarkInfested and why not start with the best? This is the Adams Memorial  in Rock Creek Cemetery.

After the suicide of his wife Clover,  author Henry Adams commissioned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to construct a memorial influenced by Buddhist art and “the acceptance, intellectually, of the inevitable.”  It was erected in 1891 and the untitled work of hooded, androgynous figure immediately came to be called “Grief” by the public (some say it was Mark Twain who first dubbed it this). The hexagonal contemplative “room” was designed by the architect Stanford White.