Capital Assets

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Julia Bland, 54, a children's museum director from New Orleans, found the Koshland to be a standout among science-oriented museums. "This place is much more interpretive--not just showing cause and effect--and encourages people to think for themselves, which is something that we baby boomers are certainly known for," says Bland. She first visited on a business trip, then returned on a family vacation. She likes that the Koshland "doesn't preach to the public." Right, says Legro. The museum, a little more than a year old, strives to be thought provoking but pursues no political agenda.

Want to feel the inside of a stomach? View a smoker's lung? The National Museum of Health and Medicine enables tourists to see and feel the effects of disease on the human body and documents the shifting course of the history of medicine, says Jeffrey Reznick, senior curator. Founded in 1862, the institution is at its ninth location, on the campus of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The setting is appropriate, since the museum traces changes in the practice of medicine during various wars. Its collection of artifacts includes the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln and Paul Revere's dental equipment (bet you didn't know that in addition to being a silversmith, Revere was a dentist).

For those who lean more toward literature than science and medicine, the 73-year-old Folger Shakespeare Library has the world's largest collection of the Bard's memorabilia and printed works--even outnumbering collections in his native England, says director Gail Kern Paster. The first folio from 1623 is one of the Folger's most prized Shakespeare rarities. There are also non-Shakespeare engravings, artifacts and writings from 1500 to 1800. Special exhibits have included letter writing--which featured correspondence among sweethearts and an unopened letter written by King George I--from the same time frame. The library houses a 240-seat theater that features professional performances of Shakespeare's works (starting Oct. 23: Much Ado About Nothing), as well as other shows, concerts and readings throughout the year. "We really appeal to the reading population of the boomer generation," Paster says.

Also celebrating the arts--but from a female perspective--is the district's National Museum of Women in the Arts. The 24-year-old establishment shows work by more than 800 women artists, from Renaissance paintings to contemporary sculpture. Unlike most facilities that showcase women's art, this one doesn't dwell on a single period or collections from one artist, notes director Judy Larson. Nor does it focus solely on painting and sculpture. Special exhibits have also concentrated on women in film, literature and music. "Baby-boomer women who were coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s and see themselves as pioneers will be able to relate to the works of our artists, who were also pioneers for their various times in history," says Larson.