Paris: The Museum Installment

The Louvre

Have you ever read the DaVinci Code by Dan Brown?  It's a great novel that mostly has nothing to do with our experience in Paris, except that it was my first exposure to the Louvre - arguably the most famous museum in the world.  There are many things to say about the Louvre.  I have never been to a larger "place of looking".  Everywhere you go - outside the museum, inside the museum - people are just looking.  Adam Gopnik once made the observation in his book Paris to the Moon that people in Paris prefer things that have light shining on them (the Louvre) as opposed to light shining from them (Time Square).  Gopnik has spent much of his life living in Manhattan, so that obvious difference was not lost on him when he moved to Paris in the 90's.  It's an insightful observation, I'd say, about Paris as a hole, and the Louvre is a shining example of how Gopnik's statement is true.  

Standing before the Louvre, the first glaring observation we made was that in addition to being very pretty, the building is absolutely enormous.  The second observation was that there were a lot of people staging jumping pictures in front of it.  Most jumpers did their leaps with the famous glass pyramid in the background, most were under the age of 23, and most were actually able to clear the ground.  I'm not going to tell you how many out-takes our photo shoot had, and I still haven't determined if my apparent lack of a vertical is due to Fritz's photography skills or the fact that I'm a 30-year-old white girl with messed up ankles.  Oh well.  We tried.  

Here's another view looking out at the glass pyramid, which serves as the official entrance to the museum, with the Tuileries Garden behind it where you can just make out the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and the Ferris wheel.  

Touring the Louvre in its entirety could have easily taken us the full 6 days of our Paris trip.  As it is, we spent the better part of a day winding through the colossal museum's numerous galleries.  We did our best to hit the Louvre's most famous installations.  Antonio Canova carved Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss out of marble in 1777, which might have been my favorite piece there.    

One wing of the Louvre contains the preserved apartments of Napoleon III.  He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution and is best known today for his grand reconstruction of Paris.  He was a very influential figure during his time and he lived lavishly at one end of the Louvre. 

Image downloaded from the internet

Now open google in your browser and type in "Mona Lisa".  Or you could just ask Siri to "find images..."  If you do, you'll find something much like the what you see pictured above.  I downloaded that image from the web.  While it is true that in this modern technological age, the Mona Lisa is always at your fingertips, you haven't really been to the Louvre until you have seen the Mona Lisa in person.  It hangs behind a sheet of thick glass surrounded by a ten-foot rope preventing visitors from getting too close.  Even with all of these restrictions in place, a sea of museum guests overwhelms the gallery to peer at Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting every day.  This means that when you try to get your own pic of Ol' Mona, you end up with photos like this...

... because trying to get a clear shot of the portrait without someone's selfie stick in your photo is next to impossible.  Scratch that, selfie sticks are not allowed in the Louvre (thank goodness).  So instead, you can stand and watch as everyone admires "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world" through their 4.5 x 2-inch screens.  

Like these people.  They all are so happy to be eternalizing the most famous piece of art so they can forever carry that questionably lovely countenance of Lisa Gherardini in their pockets.  A few paragraphs ago, I suggested that you google "Mona Lisa" because if you do, there is a very good chance that your view will be just as good, if not better than mine was when I was standing in the Louvre.  And it is certainly better than a cell phone picture taken from 15 feet away.   

Considering all these things, one is led to consider that perhaps visiting the Mona Lisa is less about appreciating art (for many), and much more about "making it," as Fritz puts it, in life.  Every day, people come from all over the globe to see this one painting.  And for this reason, a crummy cell phone picture, even if Siri could produce a higher quality image from a bathroom stall in Maysville, Kentucky, is invaluable; perhaps even as priceless as the Mona Lisa itself.  

It's actually best if you take a Mona Selfie.

The other notable part of the Louvre is that the entire museum is now accessible via a specially programmed 3D Game Boy! 

The Louvre: brought to you by Nintendo.  The interactive map was extremely helpful, allowing us to navigate through the building with ease as we sought out our art pieces of interest, tracked down the bathrooms, and located the nearest in-house café.  

Plus it had hours of commentary and education on all the featured works of art.  We just had to remind ourselves to look up from the hand-held virtual Louvre every now and again so as not to miss the real museum.  These things have a way of sucking up all of your attention.

We were fortunate enough to be in town on Museum Night, a magical evening when the museums of Paris open their doors from 8pm to midnight for free access.  Fritz and I went to the Musee d'Orsay, which is located in a converted railway station on the left bank of the Seine.  It houses the largest collection of Impressionist masterpieces in the world!  

Guests can have a coffee in the attic of the building while looking out through the old clock face to see Sacre Coeur, the elegant white church perched on the distant hill. 

In addition to the incredible collection of art, we heard that there would be live jazz music played all evening in front of famous art pieces.  This trio is playing in front of Monet's depiction of the Tuileries Garden. 

The finale was a 30-minute concert featuring a 15-piece ensemble playing Dave Brubeck!  Gathering with hundreds of people to enjoy art and music was a breath of fresh air, especially considering how many of the guests were in our age range.  It was wonderful to see that in our modern world, art continues to be valued and appreciated.  

Eiffel Tower at night

Fritz and I walked home, hand-in-hand at the end of the night through the illuminated streets of Paris.

The full moon made its presence known, peaking between the clouds above the Louvre as lovers traded secrets in the grass.