This day, our last full day in Paris, brought us all over the city. It was a beautiful, clear, and warm day, again hot in the sun. Also, the sun made it difficult to take pictures because the contrast was too high. Nevertheless, I took some. Di Yin took some too. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #1 in this album). When you see a picture of Di Yin pushing a luggage cart (picture #47), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.
We spent the morning running errands, mostly picking up gifts for people back home. Our route wandered through the upscale boutique shops in the area north of the Louvre and Jardin des Tuileries. On the way, we also stopped by the post office to mail postcards, a surprisingly fast and efficient transaction. Of course, as we collected gifts for friends and relatives, we detoured to sight-see in the area.
After shopping, we took the metro east past the Bastille (well, where it previously stood) to meet for lunch a coworker/friend, P, who's lived in Paris with his family for the last year. It was a great meal, one of our best on the trip. As usual, for details see the pictures.
We parted ways after lunch, with Di Yin and me walking to the conveniently close Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. We meandered through the cemetery to visit certain graves, most notable Oscar Wilde, whose grave had a small crowd. Walking through this vast sea of monuments/funerary sculpture was weirdly pleasant. I think the pictures convey the sense. Incidentally, we saw lots of crows.
We took the metro a bit north to Canal Saint Martin. We started our walk along the canal near the stations of Stalingrad and Jaures. This area was sketchy. Because Di Yin and I were tired, we walked only a few blocks along the canal before heading home (doing about a third of my guide book's walking route). I feel like we got the feel of canal.
We rested.
Dinner was at L'Ambassade d'Auvergne, a restaurant literally across the street from our apartment that specializes in cuisine from Auvergne. Auvergne is a rustic central region of France known for its pork. Only two-thirds of the way through this trip did I find out it was a chow-worthy destination. This turned out to be another good meal, with great appetizers and desserts though generally disappointing mains.
With two unusually good meals this day, it was a nice way to end our trip in Paris.
Paris: May 23: Good Food and Other Stuff
Paris: May 22: Eiffel Tower and the Architecture Museum
Following K's request, the day's goal was to see the Eiffel Tower up close.
I took pictures. Di Yin took fewer, partially because she didn't take pictures on our late afternoon excursion. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #163). If you're in slideshow mode and see a picture of us on a train, you've cycled back to the beginning of the album and are viewing pictures from an earlier day that I already linked to.
But first (before the real adventures): another day, another pastry run.
After breakfast, we hung out in the apartment until it was time for our early lunch reservation at Breizh Cafe, a restaurant known for its Breton style crepes. (We had an early lunch so we could make it to the Eiffel Tower before K had to leave.) Brittany crepes use buckwheat flour rather than the standard egg crepe batter. Interestingly, the cafe has three locations: Brittany, Paris, and Tokyo. The menu was in Japanese in addition to English and French. We were a bit overwhelmed with the number of choices. For details on the meal, see the pictures.
After lunch, we took the metro across town to the Eiffel Tower, disembarking at the station (Trocadero) just across the Seine from it. We took many pictures as we approached the tower, from beneath it, and as we retreated in the opposite direction. We passed lots of people peddling stuff on blankets; this didn't surprise us much. More surprisingly, we saw a number of card sharks, each with quite a crowd.
Having had our fill of the Eiffel Tower, we headed back to our apartment. (We didn't feel any need to ride up the tower, especially considering the tremendous view we got from the Sacre Coeur the previous day. The tower would've shown Paris from a different side of the city but I didn't care enough.) K had to pick up her bag to head to the train station for her train home.
After dropping K at the station, I advocated to Di Yin that we should go explore more. I felt as if we didn't do enough this day. Happily, Di Yin was persuaded, a good thing because the museum we ended up going to turned out to be one of our favorites on this trip.
The museum we selected, the architectural museum, Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, was back across town, near the same station by the Eiffel Tower that we disembarked at earlier this day.
The museum covers a millennium of French architecture. The bottom level exhibits tons of casts of church facades. It's shockingly extensive. I was impressed with the V&A Museum's Cast Court, yet that's a mere two rooms and this is perhaps a dozen. There must be four times more casts in this museum than in the V&A! It was neat to see these facades at close proximity without crowds (as there would be if we visited the churches in person).
The cast section also has a great 3-d interactive computer system for virtually visiting many churches. One can pan around in any direction and zoom in. The comprehensive imagery (one can look straight up, straight down, where-ever) and the detail (zooming in, one can see more details than one can with the human eye standing in the same spot) makes this an awesome addition to the museum.
An upper level in the museum has lots of models of more recent buildings: houses, sports venues, cultural venues, public buildings, and, yes, churches.
A special exhibit about the creation of social housing discussed each housing project on a theoretical level about its architectural style and about its architectural construction of space and community.
A separate wing of the museum has accurate copies of church murals (complete with the degradations that happened over time). This exhibit is quite an extensive complement to the casts of the church facades.
Not everything was translated into English but enough was that I was happy. Plus, the exhibits are all visual, meaning I didn't feel like I had to read much to get something about of them.
As an added bonus, the museum has great views of the Eiffel Tower from its huge windows. The Eiffel Tower views were arresting. No matter how many times I saw it, I paused every time I passed a window.
We spent about an hour and a half in the museum before they kicked us out at closing time. We saw almost all the permanent exhibits.
I was very happy we went out again after dropping K off, both in terms of seeing more and because the museum turned out to be great--our "delightful surprise" for the trip.
We went home for dinner.
Paris: May 21: Montmartre
Di Yin's friend K came to Paris for the weekend. We asked her earlier what she wanted to see in Paris while visiting us and we postponed exploring the places she wanted to see until she was here. That's how we ended up exploring Montmartre this day.
I took pictures. Di Yin did too. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #78). When you see a picture captioned "the next morning, we went to a Breton crepes place" (picture #163), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.
First, however, I had to have my traditional pastry breakfast. K was as excited about this as I so we showed her a few pastry shops as she selected her breakfast pastry.
After breakfast we took the train up to Montmartre, a lively neighborhood that is so hilly it reminded me of San Francisco. There are lots of pretty houses in the area. Around the Sacre Coeur basilica it's quite touristy, packed with shops, restaurants, and boutiques. There were entertainers scattered around: a capoeira troop, and musicians performing The Beatles (not surprising), Michael Jackson (not surprising), and Oasis (surprisingly universal). Also, the area is still rightly noted for its artists; one neat square was packed with artists selling their wares / hawking their skills. (I say still because Montmartre used to be Paris's artist quarter.)
After exploring some of Montmartre, we headed down the hill to lunch at Un Zebre A Montmartre. We then climbed back up to see the Sacre Coeur and the remainder of Montmartre we wanted to see. We headed down the hill and stairs once again and grabbed the metro to the Latin Quarter, where Di Yin wanted to wander around a bit.
Of course, I guessed her real reason for going down there: nearby, on Ile Saint Louis, is Berthillon, a great sorbet shop that we previous discovered. It remained great. We sat by the Seine and ate, taking our shoes off and draping our legs over the edge (but not into the water; it was too far below us).
We walked home, accidentally passing a environment/green-themed street fair on the way.
For dinner we brought K to our local standby, Les Philosophes, which we visited twice before. The place is good but the menu is limited so it doesn't excite me much. Di Yin likes the place so we keep returning.
Paris: May 20: Versailles
This day was finally our long-planned day to go to Versailles. After I ate a pastry breakfast at home, Di Yin and I assembled the picnic lunch to bring to Versailles and we were on our way.
I took a bunch of pictures this day. In fact, I took more pictures than Di Yin took. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #1 in this album). When you see a picture of Di Yin holding a book on a train (picture #76), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.
However, we got on the wrong train! It took us a while to realize it because we were too engrossed looking out the windows watching the Parisian suburbs go by. They looked fairly English. We enjoyed the journey, though I wish we didn't have this lengthy (two hour) detour that wound around to the north-northwest of the city. Versailles is southwest.
Versailles is a grand royal palace, in the same vein as Hampton Court Palace, on a king-size estate. Because we arrived late, we decided to stroll around the gardens, have our picnic lunch, and only then later in the afternoon explore the palace itself.
The gardens are designed in a very regular, geometric pattern (the French style). Interestingly, Di Yin observed that the width of the paths in most of the gardens implied everything was meant to be carriage roads. Anyway, though the linear geometric pattern of this formal garden style appeals to me (and I think I could be a good designer of French gardens), I find I enjoy strolling and sitting in English gardens more.
I was disappointed that about half the groves I wanted to see (whether for their statues, their fountains, or their design) were closed. Furthermore, the fountains weren't running anywhere. I guess the grounds weren't yet in full force for the tourist high season.
Incidentally, many marble statues looked too new and clean, especially those outside. I assume they're reproductions of the original, though I suppose they could have just been cleaned excellently rather recently.
As for the palace, it was opulent and extravagant (as expected). It was built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under King Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. We took the audio guide tour through everything. The audio guide was good: interesting and paced well (except for the section on the Dauphin Apartments, but that was probably by necessity because there are fewer interesting things to say about them). Aside from the Dauphin Apartments, we listened to everything, which is quite something because Di Yin normally has little patience for audio guides.
Part of the palace houses the Museum of French History. The museum has many paintings done in the late seventeenth century when the museum was established. It's neat how a contemporary museum becomes a history museum.
In all, we spent 1:45 in the palace. After finishing the palace, we had some extra time so we walked the grounds a bit more. Despite this extra time, we had to skip visiting the palaces of Trianon as well as Marie-Antoinette's estate, all of which are attached to Versailles. Those palaces and grounds are a twenty-five-minute walk each way from the main palace; hence we couldn't squeeze them in despite having some extra time. We had simply lost too much time from our train mistake. Regardless, we decided we got a good feel of the grounds and palaces in Versailles; we didn't feel deprived.
We wandered through the town of Versailles on the way to the train station. It seemed like a nice town/suburb, quite wealthy.
We took the train home (no wrong trains this time), ate dinner at home, and met Di Yin's friend, K, who arrived in the evening to visit us for two days.
Paris: May 19: Musee d'Orsay
Our main goal this day was to visit the Musee d'Orsay, our last of Paris's three major national museums. We chose this day to visit it because it's open late on Thursdays. Thus, if we liked it and wanted to spend a long time there, we wouldn't have to hurry.
I took some pictures. Di Yin took similarly few. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #296 in the album). If you're in slide-show mode and see a picture captioned "the beginning of a new week" with strange blue things hanging from a shop awning, you've cycled back to the beginning of this album and are back at an earlier day on the trip. If you hit pictures of the bread festival, you've definitely cycled around. I've already linked to those pictures.
After breakfast at home (I dashed out first to buy my morning pastry to get back in my routine), we headed over to the Richard-Lenoir market again to go shopping. (We visited it four days earlier.)
We lugged our market supplies home and used some of them to make lunch.
After lunch, we walked a bit to catch a bus to take us to the museum. We decided we'd ridden enough metros so, as the bus was convenient, we might as well take it.
The Musee d'Orsay covers art from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, thus continuing where the Louvre ends in the mid eighteenth century and ending before the Pompidou begins a third of the way through the twentieth century. I looked forward to liking the Orsay more than the other two museums because this is my favorite time period for art.
The Musee d'Orsay is a grand space: an entirely open former train station complete with an opulent, gorgeous clock. I wish I could've taken a picture but photography was prohibited inside.
The museum has all the impressionists I expected: Renoir, Pissarro, Degas (he liked his woman and dancers; also, early Degas is not my thing), Monet (both early and late; early is not as good), Manet, Sisley, Cezanne, Bonnard, Matisse (during his pointillism days), Van Gogh, and Gauguin. I learned about the rise in pastels, which I didn't realize coincided with impressionism and post-impressionism. I noticed that Henri-Edmond Cross, who I hadn't heard of, was as effective a pointillist as Seurat. I also hadn't heard of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but he deserves to be in the list above. There were certainly artists who didn't inspire me (different styles than the styles I enjoy, but from the time period the museums covers) and whose names I didn't write down. (Except one: I wrote down the name Adolphe William Bouguereau not because I like him but because he makes such weird, large religious paintings (light allegories).)
I realized I went into the museum expecting only paintings, but the museum also has things I didn't expect such as a lot of sculpture, early examples of photography, furniture, vases, plates, and other decorative arts from that time (e.g., pre-raphael, art nouveau).
The museum has an exhibit on Paris's Opera House, with a cool twenty-foot by twenty-foot model of the opera house quarter that was topped with glass so one could walk across. There's also a large model of the Opera House itself (also twenty feet long). Plus, there are full-scale reliefs from its facade as well as sculptures from the building. Di Yin and I had originally planned to visit the Opera House at some point during our stint in Paris but after seeing this exhibit we didn't feel the need to any longer--it was that effective at conveying the sights.
Overall, it is a fairly good museum. We spent about four hours in the museum in total. (I'm not counting the time we left the museum for an aperitif and break.) Like the Orangerie, the building's architecture provides good natural light. There is almost no painting-level commentary, but the room commentary is good (though sometimes in overblown language) and in English, French, and Spanish.
After the museum, Di Yin insisted on walking home, so walk home we did, crossing the Seine, passing through the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, passing by the Louvre, and heading through the Palais Royale and its gardens. Seventy minutes later we were home. Though our feet ached a bit, it was such a picturesque walk that we didn't complain much.
Then we immediately found somewhere to eat: La Fresque.
Paris: May 18: Musee de l'Orangerie, Berthillon, and more
This was meant to be a low-key recovery day after our previous long days of walking and sightseeing. Di Yin managed our timing this day, and it ended up relaxing and fun. Maybe I should let her control the itinerary more often.
I took pictures. Di Yin of course did too. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #215 in the album). When you see a picture of homeless sleeping on a mattress (with a caption that begins "another day") (picture #296), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.
For once, I didn't begin the day with a pastry! Rather, we ate a makeshift breakfast at home: refrigerated supermarket pancakes (good, better than any I've found in the states) topped with mashed sardines ("better than tuna" Di Yin says) or mashed eggplant; a leftover steamed artichoke, which went really well with the sardines; and French yogurt, pineapple this time. I've also had rhubarb and apricot (both of which I preferred because they were less sweet than the pineapple). And, okay, I did have a bite of the previous day's leftover palmier.
We took the metro to the western end of the Jardin des Tuileries, where the Musee de l'Orangerie is located. On the way to the museum we walked through a fraction of the garden-park.
The Musee de l'Orangerie is rightly famous for its huge Monets. They're a striking sight. Di Yin's reaction was "I just gotta say wow." Also, walking the perimeter of rooms with these paintings so that my field of vision was completely covered by these paintings was an entirely different experience than seeing them from afar.
The museum has an extensive impressionist collection. As I walked through a lower hallway admiring the museum's many nice Renoirs and Cezannes, I thought, "this is my type of museum." It also has lots of Rousseau, Laurencin, Matisse (he's into the ladies), Modigliani, Picasso, Utrillo, Derain (pre-cubism), and Soutine (the bridge between impressionism and cubism). There are practically no one-off paintings--the museum chooses a handful of notable artists and focuses on them.
The pieces are presented well under good natural lighting. No paintings had explanatory labels and the room explanations were only in French, but I enjoyed the museum regardless. We spent about an hour and a half in it.
After the museum we headed to lunch at Le Souffle. It serves about a dozen types each of savory and sweet souffles, as well as other dishes. The souffles we had were good, light, and airy. Nevertheless, I think I prefer Cafe Jacqueline in San Francisco (my review), but it may be due to the difference in types of souffles we ordered.
From Le Souffle, we walked over to Paris's most famous avenue, Champs-Elysees. Because it was sunny and warm (hot in the sun), we stuck to the shade. We walked through its garden end and its shopping section most of the way to the Arc de Triomphe. I know Champs-Elysees is famous for its shopping but I found the window-shopping not as nice as the window-shopping the previous day.
A metro trip later, we were on the other side of the Seine in Luxembourg Gardens, below the Latin Quarter. It's a large, pretty, grand, stately, popular park. We strolled around it and also sat at various places in it.
We decided to walk (indirectly) home from here, taking us past the Pantheon, through the Latin Quarter and the many cafes near its universities, across Ile de la Cite to Ile Saint Louis. At Ile Saint Louis, we stopped by Berthillon for sorbets. They were fan-freaking-tastic, on par with the amazing, memorable gelatos we had in Rome.
After our snack, we finished making our way home. We ate dinner at home this night.
Paris: May 17: S. Le Marais, Ile St Louis, Jardin des Plantes Quarters
It was another beautifully temperate day to walk around a pretty city, though this day was brightly sunny (in contrast to the others). We spent the whole day walking. Though we didn't do everything I'd ambitiously planned, it nevertheless ended up being a long, exhausting day, and a day on which we didn't see any sights people would consider important.
My pictures provide a sampling of the things we saw. Di Yin also took pictures. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #141 in the album). When you see a picture with the caption "another day" (with the Eiffel Tower in the background) (picture #215), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.
We began by walking through the south side of Le Marais, a district we explored the rest of already: 1, 2. On Rue de Temple, we found many necklace shops and handbag shops, often engaging in large transactions only (i.e., buying in bulk).
We crossed over to Ile Saint Louis, explored it, then hopped back briefly into Le Marais, and then strolled over to the neighborhood across the river surrounding Jardin des Plantes. On the island, Rue Saint Louis en l'Ile has many cute shops. We also realized that it's cooler and winder near the Seine, yet another reason to want to be near it. Back in Le Marais, Rue Saint Paul is a nice street. Though I don't like the stores as much as Rue Saint Louis en l'Ile, I think I like the feel more. (See the photograph.)
We stopped in Pavillon de L'Arsenal, which turned out to be the highlight of our day. The main exhibit covers how Paris grew architecturally and geographically. It explores how commercial interests and political will influenced the result, and how the changes were implemented through building codes and zoning changes. The museum has a number of models and videos. Upstairs are pictures and discussions of major new buildings and renovations in Paris in the last few decades.
We then wandered around for quite a while hunting for food, eventually finding Comptoir Mediterranee, an adorable little deli that serves food from Lebanon. The guy running the show spoke French, Japanese, and English with Di Yin and was a friendly hoot. I wonder if he spoke more languages. He ended up showing Di Yin pictures of his Japanese friends' children. I thought it might be a one-man joint--he assembled our sandwiches for us--but someone came in to help him at some point. Also, he played (American) jazz music over the cafe's speakers.
After lunch we explored the neighborhood around Jardin des Plantes. Obviously, we had to go in Jardin des Plantes, Paris's botanical garden. We didn't explore much of the garden but did discover there's a zoo. There were some pens, including one of kangaroos, outside the menagerie proper; we enjoyed the sights (and smells) of the animals. There are also some themed gardens; we spotted the alpine one. Also, in search of the labyrinth (which turned out to be a spiral), we climbed to the high point in the garden (which turned out to be nothing special except for the nice breeze).
In this area, we also stopped by the Grand Mosque, where we sat and rested for a while. We passed near a church with (according to my guide book) a classical (a la Roman) interior, but not close enough to detour to see it for variety.
Heading back toward the Latin Quarter, we made our way to Paris's Pantheon. Built in the eighteenth century, there's no Roman history to it, just Roman architectural style. It's been at times a church and at times not (right now it's not). Sadly, it was too late in the afternoon: the Pantheon was closing soon and we decided it wasn't worth the entrance fee to go in given the time we had.
We walked up and down the noted old street Rue Mouffetard. The southern side is a market street as good as our local one, Rue Montorguiel. We heard more English here than in other parts of Paris. It's a more medieval part of Paris (near the heart of the Left Bank) with correspondingly more tourists.
Here, we ran into a friend of Di Yin who's working on her dissertation while living in Paris. She was sitting outside by a cafe having a drink with her cousin. It was a shock to run into someone Di Yin knows at random in a foreign city. We sat and joined them and chatted for a while.
Later, when they had to run, we took the metro back up to near our apartment to eat at Les Philosophes, the same restaurant we ate at on our first night. It was still good.
Paris: May 16: Ile de La Cite and the Centre Pompidou
On this day, we slept late, the result of many long days one after another. We decided to make this an easier day.
Nevertheless, I ended up taking well over a hundred pictures, in fact the most I took on any day during our trip. They document the day well.
Di Yin also took many pictures. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #1 in the album). When you see a picture with a caption that begins "the next day" (picture #141), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.
After breakfast, we headed south to Ile de La Cite mainly to see the two major religious sights on the island: Notre Dame Cathedral and Sainte Chapelle church. Ile de La Cite is the island in the Seine on which the town that grew into Paris originally started. It now contains many large government buildings and also some narrow lanes.
Our first stop on the island, however, turned out to be La Fete du Pain: the party of bread. This pavilion in the square in front of Notre Dame had many bakers demonstrating their techniques. It was mostly a promotional activity I think--they gave away a lot of samples--but they did have stands on the other side of the square to sell more bread and pastries and sandwiches.
We then explored Notre Dame Cathedral. It took 170 years to build. I always forget that cathedrals take a long time.
After Notre Dame, we stuck our heads again in Fete du Pain, wandered through Marche Aux Fleurs (flower market), and headed over to the next big destination.
Sainte Chapelle is incredible! It's small, but all the more lovely for its size. A brochure calls it "a gem of High Gothic architecture." It's nice simply standing in the compact space bathed in the light streaming through a dozen large, intricate stained glass windows. It's peaceful and atmospheric. I think the candelabras help with the latter.
My guidebook says some windows are more important and/or impressive than the rest, but I don't see how--they're all amazing.
I like how the figures in the stained glass are small--the windows don't bang you over the head with "this is a picture of this particular saint" as some stained glass windows do. If you look closely (but I generally didn't), you'll notice the scenes are actually pictures from the bible, arranged clockwise chronologically around the chapel so that Christ's Passion is above the altar.
I was worried we shouldn't go to Sainte Chapelle on a cloudy day, and this day was cloudy. I needn't have been. Di Yin told me the stained glass will be nice anytime--otherwise the place wouldn't be famous--and she was right.
Interesting historical fact: the chapel was built in the thirteenth century. It was built to house the Crown of Thrones, a relic that the king acquired for more than the cost of building the chapel itself.
By the time we were done with Sainte Chapelle, it was well after 3:00pm. We were so energized by the day's sights that lunch was shockingly delayed. We walked home and composed a simple lunch for ourselves.
After lunch, we relaxed for a bit.
I wanted to do something else before calling it a day. Around 5:00pm, I convinced Di Yin that we should spend the evening exploring the Centre Pompidou, a museum a mere block and a half from our apartment.
Before entering the museum itself, we enjoyed the expansive, tremendous views of Paris from the top of the building. I took a lot of pictures! Those views alone make the entrance fee worthwhile. I just wish they kept the glass cleaner.
The Pompidou is home to the National Museum of Modern Art, one of Paris's big three national museums. It's a big museum: it supposedly has the largest collection of modern art in Europe! I liked the 1920-1960s floor (and especially the earlier parts) much more than the 1960-onward floor. After seeing this museum, I looked forward to the Musee d'Orsay (the only one of the big three I hadn't yet visited) because it focuses on the time period before this museum (and after the Louvre). I think all the art I tend to like comes from this middle period.
The museum has what you'd expect given the period: rooms full of Matisse, coverage of Fauvism (Braque, who I like, his earlier work in particular), Cubism (represented by more Braque), Picasso (in rooms and even so many they're shoved into hallways), Kandinsky (ditto), and Dado. There were also rooms devoted to people who I never heard of but must be important: Georges Rouault, Henri Michaux, Paul Strand (a photographer), Alberto Giacometti, and Francis Bacon. But don't let me mislead you--most of the museum is not devoted to particular artists. I listed those artists above because I find it interesting what artists they considered important enough (and had enough pieces from) to warrant their own rooms. Incidentally, I realized that the term fauvism derives from the French word for "wild beasts." It was applied to these artists because they strayed far from the traditional rules of painting.
My pictures show what I thought was interesting in the museum. Perhaps the most striking piece isn't represented in my pictures: there was a movie by Rineke Dijkstra, titled I Can See A Woman Crying, of British school children talking about Picasso's painting Weeping Woman. It's earnest, intelligent, and mesmerizing in terms of what the students say, how they think, how imaginative they are, and how they relate to each other. I found a copy of the video online (11:52) but it's such poor quality it's hard to make out what the students are saying (especially with their accents) and hence not worth watching. Rather, read the best description of the work (the paragraph "About this work, Rudi Fuchs writes"). Other worthwhile commentaries: 1, 2 (section beginning "Do I see a woman crying?"), 3. I think I got more out of watching the video because I hadn't seen the piece the students were looking at.
The museum is done well: every room has a description; there are a decent number of labels, and all labels are translated into English.
In addition to the permanent collection, we visited two special exhibits. The special exhibit on Francois Morellet displayed funky geometric installations, often with neon lights. Some installations were motion activated. I kind of liked a few of these, or liked the idea behind them at least.
In the special exhibit on Jean-Michel Othoniel, I realized he makes generally weird stuff with lots of types of materials. I like his glass mobiles. He also has some glass structures that it's not clear what holds them up / keeps them balanced. There must be a supportive metal filament inside.
We spent three hours in the museum, after which we returned home for dinner.
Posts
