Washington, D.C.’s new City Museum is an exciting addition to a city which too often seems hesitant to admit that it is a city, says Benjamin Forgey. “Splendidly tucked into the old central library, a century-old Beaux-Arts building in Mount Vernon Square, the new institution is a museum with an attitude. Washington is a capital city, the familiar saying goes, and the emphasis here falls definitively on the city side of that equation. It’s a healthy shift of emphasis. The functional and symbolic monuments of the nation’s capital do, after all, get plenty of attention. The city itself deserves a space to call its own.”