National Portrait Gallery and American Art Museum

The National Portrait Gallery is the Smithsonian museum that stays open into the evening, and that alone makes it one of the most useful free stops in Washington. It shares the Old Patent Office Building in Penn Quarter, a Greek Revival landmark that once displayed patent models and served as a hospital during the Civil War, with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, so one entrance gives you two museums. The Portrait Gallery's signature exhibition is America's Presidents, the only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House, including Gilbert Stuart's famous Lansdowne portrait of George Washington. The portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama, by Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald, are among the most visited works in the city and have drawn new audiences to portraiture. Beyond the presidents, the galleries tell American history through faces: activists, athletes, artists, scientists and entertainers, in painting, photography and new media. Across the building, the American Art Museum covers American art from the colonial period to today, with folk art, landscapes, a lively contemporary collection and an open storage area called the Luce Foundation Center where thousands of objects sit in glass cases. Between them is the Kogod Courtyard, a glass-roofed interior court with trees and fountains and plenty of seating, one of the best free places to rest downtown. Admission is free, and the museum is open daily from late morning into the evening, closed only on December 25. The honest notes: the building is large and the layout can confuse, and as a federal museum it can close during funding lapses. Fit: first-timers, couples, night owls and art and history lovers.

The building is part of the attraction. The Old Patent Office was one of the grandest public buildings of the early republic, and it hosted Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural ball in 1865, a few weeks before Ford's Theatre a few blocks away. Walt Whitman and Clara Barton both worked with wounded soldiers here when it served as a hospital. Saved from demolition in the 1950s and given to the Smithsonian, it reopened in 2006 after a major renovation that added the courtyard's undulating glass canopy by Foster and Partners, which floods the space with daylight. The Portrait Gallery's collection goes beyond paintings: it includes photographs, drawings, sculpture and contemporary media, and it runs a recurring national portrait competition that brings fresh work by living artists into the galleries. The American Art Museum, for its part, also runs the Renwick Gallery near the White House, a separate building devoted to craft and decorative art that makes a good add-on for anyone walking to Lafayette Square. Between the two museums there is enough here for several visits, which is why locals treat the building as a neighborhood living room as much as a museum.

Visit craft: arrive in the afternoon, start with America's Presidents on the second floor, then find the Obama portraits and the twentieth-century Americans galleries. Cross to the American Art Museum side for the folk art and the open storage of the Luce Center on the upper floors, then settle into the Kogod Courtyard with a coffee. The late opening hours mean you can come after a day on the Mall and still have time, or visit before dinner in Penn Quarter or Chinatown. Check the museum's calendar for free evening talks and family programs.

Practicals: 8th and G Streets NW in Penn Quarter, directly above the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station. Free, no tickets needed, with a security check at entry. Open daily except December 25. There is a cafe in the courtyard. Allow ninety minutes to two hours. Pair it with Ford's Theatre and the National Building Museum, all within a few blocks.