The Hirshhorn curators both seemed to like "In Red," a beautiful canvas of Tom Green's invented symbols, which also appealed to me based on my interest in "text" in art. Because of this, I had to take them to Mark Cameron Boyd's "No Way to Convey" and explain Mark's fascinating process in creating art out of textual references.

Somewhere along the tour, we discovered Judy Jashinsky's 1980s vintage portrait of Corcoran photography curator Philip Brookman. Binstock, Ward and Newman had a bit of good fun enjoying their fellow curator's portrait. "He still has that watch!" someone said.

The representational holdings in the collection, as usual, brought out interesting stories and reactions from the building's occupants. The ability of a representational work to clearly convey an idea or suggestion immediately makes its selection for a public art display a very difficult process - at least in the United States.

One artist who must have been very hard for Arkin to select is the talented Joe Shannon. Shannon regularly appears in his own paintings not only nude, but sporting a massive erection. Not the piece in this collection, "Two Poets with Champion,"  although Joe does sneak in a shirtless male.

The physical attributes of the space itself - and its occupants - played an important role in Arkin's selection and placement process, as some of the city fathers and mothers "own" certain halls (where their offices are). This "ownership" was part of the process for what "hung" there.

Tucked away in the furthest corner of one such hall is Michal Hunter's "The Fountain," a overtly sensual 1981 painting by one of Washington's top realists. There is no nudity in this work. In it, two women enjoy the sun and refresh themselves in a public fountain. But there's plenty of implied sensuality and Eros in this work, which may be the sexiest public art piece in the nation's capital.

The DC glass gods are also well represented in this collection (although so far ignored by DC area museums and curators, while at the same time being picked up by other American museums) with two mixed media pieces by Tim Tate and Michael Janis.

Photography is an important part of the collection, with the usual suspects represented with a mix of well-known work or new images. Works by top photographers such as William Christenberry, Maxwell MacKenzie, and Chan Chao are complemented by newly emerging camerartists such as Alexandra Silverthorne, Prescott Moore Lassman, Holly Foss and others.

The collection is also well stocked with some of the District's top names from the "old school", such as Gene Davis, Jacob Kainen and Felrath Hines. Active well-known names such as John Winslow, Sam Gilliam, Michael Clark, Robin Rose, James Huckenpahler and others are also augmented by very good works by Pat Goslee, Jiha Moon, Lisa Montag Brotman, Anil Revri, Michele Banks and Andrew Wodzianski.