October is an especially artful month in Paris, a time to consider new exhibitions and to take stock of ongoing or completed restorations.
Two new Paris museums
The museumscape of Paris was enriched this summer with two informative new museums this summer. While their themes may not be attention-grabbing on first glance they’re both capable of drawing visitors into the subject matter at hand.
– Citéco, a delightfully geeky and architecturally quirky museum about the economy, and
– the Liberation of Paris Museum, across the street from the Catacombs.
Timed tickets for the crowded Louvre
Due to excessive crowds, timed entry reservations are now possible and recommended to visit the Louvre, including for visitors with the Paris Museum Pass. Timed reservations are necessary for the major Leonardo da Vinci retrospective, Oct. 24-Feb. 24, marking the 500th anniversary of his death.
Degas at the Orsay
The Orsay (which English-speakers often mistakenly call the D’Orsay) recently opened a newly restored section of the museum allowing for more comfortable viewing, relatively speaking, of famous works by Van Gogh, Gaugin and others. The museum’s current temporary exhibition is Degas at the Opera, showing through January 19. The exhibition will be presented at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from March 1 to July 5 next year. Note for Degas fans: Michel Schulman, a Parisian American-French expert on Degas and other artists of that era, recently launched the digital critical catalogue of the artist’s work.
A Salute to Style at the Army Museum
Like a man in uniform? The Army Museum at the Invalides salutes military style in an exhibition from October 10 to January 26 that highlights the search for splendor from the 16th century to today by those seeking to display and legitimize military powers. The 200 pieces on display include armor, weaponry, saddlery, military haute-couture and more. The basic admission ticket to the museum allows entrance to the exhibition.
Other exhibitions in Paris
Toulouse Lautrec: Resolutely Modern, a retrospective at the Grand Palais, Oct. 9-Jan. 27.
Greco retrospective at the Grand Palais, Oct. 16-Feb.10.
Francis Bacon at the Pompidou Center, until January 20.
The Golden Age of English Painting, from Reynolds to Turner at the Luxembourg Museum, until February 20.
20 Years of Acquisition at the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum, until January 26. The museum, opened in 2006 just upriver from the Eiffel Tower, was created on the initiative of Jacques Chirac, former mayor of Paris and president of France, who passed away on September 26.
Tolkien, Journey to Middle-Earth at the BNF-François Mitterand (the National Library), Oct. 22-Feb. 16. The exhibition includes objects on loan from the Tolkien family, Bodleian Library (Oxford) and the Marquette University Libraries (Milwaukee), as well as four tapestries based on Tolkien’s work and recently woven in Aubusson.
The Golden Legend, Buddha at the Guimet Museum, an exhibition about the life of Buddha and the spread of Buddhism in Asia, Nov. 4.
Marshmallow Tulips near the Champs-Elysées
Paris may be an artful city but some works miss their mark, for example the newly installed Bouquet of Tulips by Jeff Koons, an American gift to Paris. Read and see here and find out who spoke better French at the inauguration, the U.S. ambassador appointed by Obama or by Trump.
Major renovations
The National Martime Museum, Paris
Unbeknownst to most visitors who come to admire the grand view of the Eiffel Tower from across the river at Trocadero, one wing of the building behind them—the Palais de Chaillot—is a shell of what is currently the largest museum project in France. A budget of €86-million ($94-million) has been earmarked for a major makeover of the Musée National de la Marine (National Maritime Museum) which will present through history, art and technology France’s maritime and naval ambitions over the centuries. Closed since 2017, it is slated to reopen in 2022 within the Palais de Chaillot, where it has been housed since 1937. During that time, the four portside branches of the National Maritime Museum remain open: in Brest, Rochefort, Port-Louis and Toulon.
The Maritime Museum dates its origins to a presentation of ship models in the Louvre in the 18th century, at the time when the Louvre was a royal palace. The U.K. was then France’s great rival on the high seas, and an irony of history now has a British team, Casson Mann, designing the new museography. Hopefully they’ll do a better job than they did at the Cité du Vin in Bordeaux. The team is also responsible for the presentation at the Cité Internationale de la Gastronomie that will open this month in Lyon.
An American in Paris at the Châtelet Theater
The Châtelet Theater, the city-owned imperial theater from the time of Napoleon III, inaugurated in 1862, reopened in September after major restoration and is once again presenting dance and musical comedy of the kind that can appeal to both French and international audiences. An American in Paris will be performed here from Nov. 28 to Jan. 1.
Beyond Paris
Game of Thrones meets William the Conqueror in Bayeux, Normandy
Sometimes a push from pop culture is needed to get travelers interested in history, art and artefacts, e.g. The Da Vinci Code (2003) leading visitors to Saint Sulpice Church in Paris or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831, English version 1833) bringing visitors to the Cathedral of Paris. Now it’s the turn of the 285-foot- / 8-season-long Game of Thrones Tapestry to lead visitors in Bayeux to examine the Bayeux Tapestry, the 940-year-old embroidery that recounts the Norman Conquest of England by William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy. Or vice versa.
Narratively and stylistically inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, the GoT Tapestry was woven in Northern Ireland on a jacquard loom with Irish linen and highlighted with embroidery. It’s on display near the Cathedral of Bayeux, up the street from the Bayeux Tapestry, until Dec. 31 (closed Mon. and Tues.).
Immigration to the Coalfields of the North
Way north toward the Belgium border, in the coalfield of Lewarde (near Douai), the Centre Historique Minier, which tells about three centuries of coal mining in the region, is currently presenting, until Dec. 31, an exhibition about immigration to the region between 1919 and 1939. That’s the period between the First and Second World Wars when France, its manpower and northern regions having suffered heavily during the Great War, welcomed 200,000 Polish immigrants, along with Italian and Czechoslovakian immigrants, to the mining basin of Nord-Pas de Calais to assist in reconstruction and coal mining.
© 2019, Gary Lee Kraut
I thought the Tolkien exhibit was excellent!! All Tolkien fans need to see it!