Capitals fans spend quality time at art gallery before and after Stanley Cup Final games

Erik Brady | USA TODAY

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WASHINGTON — The Washington Capitals awaited their first Stanley Cup Final home game in 20 years Saturday night. So where was Caps owner Ted Leonsis a couple of hours before the opening faceoff? Well, he was taking a selfie with a celebrated painting of Barack Obama at the National Portrait Gallery.

“I’m about to send this to Obama,” Leonsis said while showing off the shot on his phone. “I thought he was going to come tonight. So it’ll say, ‘If you won’t come to us, I’m coming to you.’ ”

It’s no surprise that Leonsis spent quality time before game time in the historic building that he calls one of his favorite places in Washington. This place is across the street from the sports arena that Leonsis owns. And though Capital One Arena, in hockey terms, is the room where it happens, the gallery is what houses Hamilton — the portrait, not the musical.

If the Smithsonian Institution is the nation’s attic, as it’s often called, then the portrait gallery is more like the nation’s living room, where we put up pictures of loved ones, and some not so loved.

Gallery director Kim Sajet thinks she knows why her museum is so instantly relatable. “People love seeing pictures of other people,” she said.

A funny thing happened on the way to the hockey forum: The gallery that houses the portraits of so many famous Americans is taking a star turn of its own in these playoffs. Las Vegas is all bright lights and the transitory nature of floor shows while the gallery quietly makes the case that Washington is muted museum lighting and the permanence of history.

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In the hours before games, Caps fans in red jerseys mingle with other museum goers in civilian attire. Ah, but it is after playoff victories that the outside of the gallery becomes a focal point of provincial pride. These days, the museum steps are where Washington fans go to bask in glory when their Capitals come out on top.

And, sure enough, late Saturday Washingtonians celebrated the first finals win at home in their history on those historic steps, with the gallery’s great columns bathed in red lights in homage to a hockey team.

“We’re rockin’ the red,” Sajet said of the lights that went up only recently.

These revival meetings on these steps are of recent vintage, too, at least for Capitals fans. Pittsburgh Penguins fans actually started it, gathering on the steps when the Pens beat the Caps in Washington, as has so often happened in the playoffs. But when the Capitals beat the Penguins in Game 5 of the conference semifinals a month ago, Caps fans took back the gallery steps. And now it is the postgame place for Caps fans to salute their team and, really, themselves.

“We want the Cup!” they chanted after Saturday’s 3-1 win gave the Caps a 2-1 series lead against the Vegas Golden Knights. The fans stood cheek by jowl chanting and reveling and all but levitating in their communal joy on steps where Sting and Shaggy performed a free pregame concert only hours earlier.

“We’re thrilled fans have chosen the steps for their celebratory moment,” Sajet said. “What I love is it’s a moment to bring everyone together. It’s about friendship and community and pride of the city and pride of our sporting heroes.”

Martin Couric, a lifelong Caps fan, couldn’t even get to the steps, such was the postgame crush of humanity. “We were shoulder to shoulder,” he said, “people you’ve never met before just hugging and slapping fives.”

The portrait gallery gets most of the credit, but the building is really two museums under one roof. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is also housed there. Andrew Jackson laid the cornerstone in 1836 and it would take more than 30 years to complete the nation’s third-oldest federal building, after the White House and Capitol.

Then the Patent Office Building, it was intended for the public display of patent models for American inventions. It is known as one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the United States. Clara Barton worked there as a clerk to the patent commissioner in the 1850s. The building was turned into military barracks, hospital and morgue during the Civil War. Walt Whitman, who would read to wounded soldiers, called it “that noblest of Washington buildings.”

Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln danced there at his second inaugural ball. That was 1865, one year after Nevada became a state. Now you can find Lincoln and all of the other former presidents in an exhibit that the gallery bills as the nation’s only complete collection of presidential portraits outside the White House.

And so it was on Saturday that you could see red jerseys that said Ovechkin and Holtby and Oshie among portraits of Jefferson and Jackson and Fillmore. Sarah Russell, who has lived the last 2-½ years in Las Vegas, came home to watch her Caps and visit the gallery, where she had her picture taken with Teddy Roosevelt. Mark Callow and his daughter Kendall, 16, visit frequently. Terri McWilliams had never been before. She thought the portraits looked like history books come to life.

The gallery says its mission is to tell the American story through the individuals who’ve shaped it. That includes, in the Champions exhibit, sports stars.

Look, there’s Babe Ruth — and Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Luminaries from Mickey Mantle to Billie Jean King to Jim Brown can be found here, though not so many hockey players. Bobby Hull races down the ice in a LeRoy Neiman piece and Wayne Gretzky shares a dual portrait with basketball’s Larry Bird.

But what if the Caps win their first Stanley Cup — maybe even at home in Game 6, when the fans could gather on the gallery steps and party like it’s 1836? Might more hockey portraits come then?

Leonsis nominated Alex Ovechkin, the Caps’ captain. And then, with a hearty laugh, Leonsis offered another candidate.

“Maybe one day I’ll get in here,” he said. “That’s what this is all about, trying to get my portrait in the portrait gallery.”

Follow Brady on Twitter @ByErikBrady