New museums

This was a week of new museums. This weekend, we all visited the fabulous Petit Palais. This gorgeous museum, which was originally constructed for the 1900 world's fair, has recently been renovated and is now the home of the Beaux Arts museum of Paris. The permanent collection has outstanding examples of painting and sculpture that trace a history of both art and the history of the city. Several of the pieces featured were originally commissioned by the city for municipal buildings or public squares. Ella went on a kids' tour of the museum where the guide read them riddles about animals to hunt for in each room of the museum, and the rest of us tagged along.


On Wednesday, Ella went to an atelier at the Palais de Tokyo - the newly renovated museum of modern art of the city of Paris. The atelier began with a one hour tour of the museum for the kids with a very engaging tour guide. They saw lots of different kinds of collage with a focus on Matisse, but spanning the range of 20th and 21st century art. Then, they went into the studio to create their own collages. They were to make a collage of a tree - but were free to interpret that any way they wanted. The kids came up with a wonderful diversity of collages. Six, however, seems to be more an age of realism than of abstraction. Ella's collage sweetly depicted a very perfect tree, with a perfect red bird flying to a neat little nest. She had a great time. Meanwhile, I toured the permanent collection of the museum which is arranged chronologically from 1900 to today. One series of installations caught my attention especially. In a series of rooms, an artist named Boltanski was apparently trying to evoke the anonymity of the human condition. The first room was empty except for a shopping cart with a revolving light in it - it gave me a headache. The next room had floor to ceiling shelves on every wall crammed full of children's clothing. It was called The Museum of Children I. The next room, The Museum of Children II, had enlarged photographs of children's faces. The last room was called Telephone subscribers. It also had floor to ceiling shelves containing 1999 phone books from all around the world, organized alphabetically. It didn't have every phone book, obviously, but in the US section, there were many from California and New York. It was really weird to be in the basement of a museum in Paris and know that if it were permitted, you could take a phone book out of this art installation and find your family's name and phone number.

Unfortunately, Abe was not able to come to the museum because his driver's licence from Ohio has expired. In order to renew it, he needed to have a form filled out certifying a vision test. He went to the pharmacy to ask for a recommendation of where to go and the pharmacist gave him the name of an optomotrist whose office happens to be right in our building. He had an appointment yesterday afternoon. A far cry from the DMV's approach of "what letters do you see. Raise your hand when you see the blinking light," the optomotrist gave Abe an extensive test of all aspects of vision. He had him look at a barn in a big machine and without Abe saying a word, the doctor noted a couple of stigmatisms. They did a thorough test of distance vision, close up vision, color blindness, peripheral vision, and so on. For driver's license purposes, though, Abe's vision is 20/20.

Thursday, another new museum. I accompanied Ella's class on a second field trip - this time to the Dapper museum of African Art. This small museum had 2 rooms downstairs of contemporary African art and one room upstairs mostly of masks. The kids watched a film of African dancing with masks and then the engaging tour guide told them interesting stories about the masks in the display. She was very good at asking them questions (e.g., "Why are children important?" and "what do you think of when you hear the word Africa?") and eliciting interesting responses. She asked them why the mouth of one mask was shaped as an o, and the guessed ranged from "he is thinking" to "he is smoking a cigar" (it was actually to show breathing in). It was cute to see the kids' amazement when she told them that many people in Africa live in apartment buildings and drive cars and watch TV (they imagine all huts and elephants). My group of 4 kids was very easy this time - Ella, Laura, Eno, and Nathan, and the metro ride, while still challenging, was easier with the practice of last week's field trip.

Also Thursday, another new thing. Our new bed arrived! Lucie's appartment, while perfect for our needs and budget, was furnished about a thousand years ago and never updated. Mostly, this doesn't bother us - after a while you don't even see the textured wallpaper or the green vinyl sofa. But, the one problem has always been the bed. I guess French people in the 30's were never taller than 5 foot 6", but obviously Abe is. So, the short bed with a footboard at the end has never been his favorite feature of the apartment. Lucie is slowly updating the furniture, and as a kindness to us, decided to start by replacing the bed. The new bed is wonderfully comfortable, about 10 crucial centimeters longer, and no footboard.