Museum Sunday

The first Sunday of each month, national museums are free. The catch is that not all museums are National, and special exhibitions are also not free. Debbie and I planned to go to some of the less popular ones just to check them out. We learned why they are less popular!

Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris is the Modern Art museum of the city of Paris. It is housed in half of what was the Electricity Pavilion during the 1937 World Exposition. It is an impressive building both inside and out. And it had some nice art, but not nearly as impressive as the d'Orsay or Louvre.  The most interesting pieces we saw were by Henri Matisse, specifically some murals he was commissioned to paint for a private party in Philadelphia (USA).  These were large paintings of “dance Parisian”, and were to be displayed above three large window in alcoves.  What we saw were the preliminary renditions.  Otherwise, I can only recommend the museum if you’ve been to the others and want to see a new building.

 Afterwards we went next door to the Palais de Tokyo.  It is in the other half of the same building.  The Palais has no standing exhibitions.  Instead, it opened in 2002 as a “site for contemporary art”.  I think they moved some of the overflow from Pompidou Musee of Modern Art to the Palais!  First, the building is pretty big – lots of space, and not much there – lots of vacant rooms.  What was there was some strange stuff!  We decided that best use of the building would be for a fantastic nightclub!  Actually, because there were not many people there, inside it was a bit scary!  I’m glad to have gone, but mostly glad I went on a free day!

Outside is another story – the building is pretty impressive.  It has classic architecture, statues, a tranquil pool, and a nice cafe that looks across to the Eiffel Tower.  It’s a pleasant spot on a sunny afternoon.  Across the street from this is another impressive looking building and nice garden.  When we checked further, we found it’s called Square Brignole-Galliera, and sometimes has exhibits.  Currently, it is closed for renovations.

 Our next plan was to check out the Grand Palais, a well-known site as it dominates the right bank directly across from Invalides.  For some reason, I guess we thought its museums and huge exhibition hall were National museums – we were wrong.  Both the Grand and Petite Palais had entrance fees, so we decided to move on.  We went to Tulieries and were rewarded.  There’s a free photo display on exhibit.  An artist named AHAE had a display called “Through my Window”.  He spent over a year in South Korea taking pictures out the same window.  It was very good.  You may think this sounds boring – same thing over and over.  Not at all – different times of day, different seasons, different weather conditions, zoom in, zoom out.  It was great.  Check it out at AHAE.com if you want to see.

As usual, we barely made it home before passing out from lack of nourishment!  The problem was exasperated by me discovering that my Navigo pass expired (end of June) and we didn’t have enough metro tickets for me to get to work Monday!  I can’t buy them at a machine because US credit cards won’t work in them (we need a chip that European credit and debit cards have).  We did have enough tickets to get back to the apartment.  Then I went to find a Tobac store – these are stores you find in most areas that sell lottery tickets and cigarettes.  They also sell metro tickets – finally found one near the apartment (noted for future reference).  We did learn that Victor Hugo isn’t exactly your normal Tobac neighborhood!  Cheers.