Paris Museum Night 2012

Kevin here.

Although I've entitled this post "Paris Museum Night 2012" it's actually a part of a larger event across all of Europe where museums open free to the public late one evening, usually in May.  This year, apparently over 2 million people went.  And I was fortunate enough to be one of them.

The poster around Paris for the European Night of Museums.

I had heard about this event a few weeks ago and grew excited about it as the time grew closer.  We discussed going together as a family.  But we've taken the kids to at least a dozen museums over the past 10 weeks -- if not more.  (As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure it's closer to 20 museums of various kinds.  The kids have been troopers!).  Plus it was going to go late into the evening.  So... my gracious wife gave me a pass to dash around Paris alone for the evening and take in as much beauty and as many masterpieces as I could.  Ho, ho!  So that's what I did.

I had a rough idea of what I would try to see but wanted to leave a little room for serendipity.  I wanted to go back and see a few things at the Louvre, if I could.  Our original trip (with a guide) was great.  But we geared it more towards seeing things we thought the kids should see.  I also wanted to go to two museums that we had not (yet) gone to see:  the Rodin museum and the Orangerie (home to more impressionist art works, including Monet's famed water lilies).  And... time permitting, I wanted to go back to one of my favorites -- the Orsay.  Love the Orsay.

It was a lot to see.  But I had roughly 5-6 hours.  So, off to the Louvre I went.  I had it in my mind that if the line to get in was atrocious (which it often is) I would just skip the Louvre.  But, surprisingly, after a short 10-minute wait (for what is actually the line to have your bags searched and go through the metal detector) I was in!  It was crowded, of course, but actually less so than our original Louvre visit a few weeks ago.  Sweet.  I picked up a map and set off.  (Don't forget: you can click on these photos to enlarge them.  I encourage you to do so.)

One of the first pieces I made a bee-line for was the Winged Victory of Samothrace.  I really do think this is one of most beautiful sculptures I've seen.  There is power and grace and beauty in it.  I love the detail on the wings.  And the way her clothes look wind-blown.  Great piece.



After a few minutes with the Winged Victory, I began to explore a bit and quickly came across The Italian Antonio Canova's famous sculpture Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss.

Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss

Now, unlike some people, I'm not made uncomfortable by nudity in art.  In fact... I encourage it.

Hah!  I kid, I kid!  Seriously though, it's a beautiful piece from the 1700's.

Then I decided to go ahead and do something I wasn't sure I really wanted to do:  try and see the Mona Lisa again.  "My Lady Lisa" can be hard to see and even harder to enjoy due to the crush of the crowds.  But I dared to journey down the long, long hallway known as the Grand Gallery (see photo below) and made a right turn into the room to see what I could see.

The Louvre's Grand Gallery.

Thankfully, the crowd wasn't too bad.  Much smaller than on our previous visit.  So I was able to get a good close look at the most famous painting in the world:

My photo of the Mona Lisa

The Mona Lisa is actually larger than I expected.  I have had so many people tell me how small it was -- and how disappointed I would be -- that I was expecting something the size of an 11x8 piece of paper.  Granted, it's not huge.  But it's about 2 1/2 feet tall.  One interesting thing is the colors of the painting.  Almost all reproductions -- posters, postcards, etc. -- don't quite get the blue-green background right.

It's a very pretty painting and I enjoyed seeing it again.

Directly across from the Mona Lisa is the awe-inspiring painting The Wedding at Cana by Veronese.

The Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese

Veronese's painting is huge -- about 32 feet wide -- and gorgeous.  Full of life and color.  It's great to just stand there and marvel at the detail -- like the guy towards the right tasting the water turned to wine with great suspicion.  Marvelous.

Most of the Leonardos and Michelangelos are in the Grand Gallery (along with more Italian art than you can shake a stick of pepperoni at), so I spent the next 45 minutes just wandering around and finding them.  One of the ones I was most interested in seeing -- da Vinci's The Virgin and Child with St. Anne -- was out on loan.  Disappointing.  But I was able to find his La Belle Ferronniere, which was lovely:

da Vinci's La Belle Ferronniere

Then I stumbled upon this painting by Bernardino Luini called Salome and the Head of John the Baptist.  Fascinating.  And a bit haunting.  Apparently it was a oft-repeated subject of Luinis, so I wonder if he was haunted too.

Luini's Salome and the Head of John the Baptist.  Salome won't look at it.

Then I stumbled on some work by a painter named Giuseppe Arcimboldo.  He was an Italian painter from the 1500's who created beautiful portraits out of other interesting objects such as fruit and flowers. I especially got a kick out of this one, called Spring:

Arcimbaldo's Spring

 Next... well, next I got lost.  The Louvre is a museum of monstrous size.  Apparently, some 6 miles of galleries (although I did not personally fact check that).  It's not that I didn't know where I was in the Louvre.  I (mostly) did.  It was that I could not figure out how to get out of the Louvre.  I finally made it, but not before 20 minutes had passed.

But... in that 20 minutes I stumbled upon the work of Paul Delaroche (who I had never heard of), in particularl a stunning work called The Execution of Lady Jane Grey.  This piece is on loan to the Louvre from the National Gallery in London and they would not allow any pictures to be taken. So, here's something I grabbed from the internet:

Delaroche's The Execution of Lady Jane Grey

It's a truly stunning work of art.  I stared at it for quite a while.  The blazing white of Jane Grey's dress. The block where she is soon to place here head (in the exact center of the painting), the wailing ladies in waiting.  A beautiful piece.  And in the room where this piece was displayed there were hundreds of pencil sketches by Delaroche as he prepared to paint this.  Amazing sketches that show his wrestling with what it should look like, experiments, fine tunings.  It was an amazing exhibit.

Once I finally found my way out of the Louvre via the big glass pyramid entrance, I headed for the Orangerie.  The Orangerie is not too far away across the Tuileries Garden -- actually ALL of the museums I saw where within a 20-minute walk of each other near the Seine River -- and houses some great Impressionist art.

But... the only thing open in the Orangerie this evening were the two rooms that house Monet's Water Lillies.  And there was a line.  So -- after trying to understand this situation from the museum worker who spoke only French -- I decided to suck it up.  It was the Monets that I mostly wanted to see anyway.  45 minutes later I was in.

No pictures though.  You can't take pictures in the Orangerie.  Which I guess is fine because there is no way to do justice to the Water Lillies works.  First, they are truly beautiful.  Deep, rich hues of blues, greens, purples, even some yellow.  Amazing, amazing work.  Mesmerizing.  But also... they are LARGE.  I had no idea.  They are mounted along large curved walls in two separate rooms of the museum.  All together, they are close to 300 feet long.

I spent about 25 minutes just gazing at them.  Then decided to move along.

To... the Rodin Museum.  The Rodin Museum is just cool.  No other way to put it.  It took me a few minutes to find it.  It's about a 15 minute walk from the Orangerie on the Right Bank of the Seine to the Left Bank... and google maps is just plain wrong about the address.  But I doubled back and found it... along with a short line to get in.  It was about 9:00pm by this time.

I mainly wanted to see his great sculpture The Thinker.  Sure enough, it's just inside the gates to the right in a large garden area.  That's the cool thing about this particular museum: there is a main house (actually a converted hotel) and a large garden.  So, many of Rodin's largest works are displayed outside in the garden.  That makes for a really cool experience, especially since the garden is well manicured and beautiful.

But... it was 9pm at night and starting to get dark in Paris.  Some of the sculpture work was not well lit, so my pictures didn't come out so great.  But here are some examples:

The Thinker

Still thinking, even from this angle.  That's some hard-core contemplation.

I love The Thinker.  Rodin had an amazing ability to evoke emotion and strength in his work.  He did more than just sculptures, but his sculptures are my favorites

Here is his The Three Shades:

The Three Shades

And his monumental bronze called The Gates of Hell, a study of Dante's Inferno.

The Gates of Hell

Interestingly enough, his Gates of Hell contains miniature versions of The Thinker, The Kiss, and The Three Shades.  And the Gates of Hell came first.  It seems that Rodin took the small ideas in The Gates of Hell and enlarged them.  And in doing so, these derivatives became some of his greatest works.

Speaking of The Kiss...  I searched everywhere in the garden of the Rodin Museum, but couldn't find it.  It might have been inside the Museum itself -- in the old hotel.  I skipped the hotel because there was a very long line to get in.  Next time, I guess.  But... a little earlier this evening, I had just so happened to pass a bronze version of The Kiss -- another Rodin original (he made several versions) -- that sits just outside the Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens.  Awesome:

Rodin's The Kiss in bronze.

I spent quite a bit of time in the gardens at Rodin's museum.  It was great to stroll around the beautiful place, all lit up at night, and look at Rodin's work.

At about 10:30pm... well, I was getting tired.  I've been walking a lot in Paris lately.  I've put in a few days of 10+ mile walks (I kid you not).  But... hey... how often do you get to go free to some of the greatest museums in the world?

So... off to the Orsay Museum.  It's only about a 15-minute walk from the Rodin.  So I head off toward the Seine again, start to get close, round the corner and I see this:



Boom.  A massive crowd.  At 10:45pm at night.  In fact, a lovely woman came on the loudspeaker just as I arrived to announce in both French and English that anyone not inside by 11pm would not be able to get in tonight.  So... there was no way I was going to get in by 11, so I decided to call it a night.  I would have been more disappointed except that we had already visited the Orsay a few weeks ago.  It's a great museum, though.  It might be my favorite, especially the works of the Impressionists.  Go if you get the chance.

So, I headed down to the Seine to walk along it as I made my way back to our apartment. It was a lovely evening, if a bit cold and a bit wet (it's rained quite a bit in Paris this May, much to our chagrin). It was nice to contemplate what amazing beauty I had seen that evening.  It's something that really does make you reflect on what it means -- at least in part -- to be created in God's very image; and for some among us to create some stunning works of sculpture, painting, sketches... amazing.  It's worth the time spent to see it.