It’s day 133, and I’ve been on 98 visits to museums (including some repeats and out of town trips), leading to a batting average of 0.7 museums a day. Not quite the titular “a Paris museum a day,” but close enough that I’m starting to scare myself a little. So – time for our randomly scheduled Recommendation Roundup #2!
As Essential as a Baguette
- Musée d’Orsay (“make time for people-watching, a.k.a. ‘Paris’ Funniest Tourist Meldowns’”)
- Louvre (“what seemed like every tourist in Paris, mostly wandering helplessly or running around with small infants screaming “Where baby changing room?!?” at museum guards”)
- Centre Pompidou (“I and a bunch of other jet-setting twenty-somethings are all on our computers, although I hope that no one else is googling ‘Paris apartment how to turn on water’”)
Château de Versailles (“Just a little note to say that it will always start to rain when you get to the point of the gardens farthest away from the exit”)
As Much to be Avoided as Leftover Snails
- Institut du Monde Arabe (“This place is chock-a-block with little sh*ts, and is such an informational desert that I started humming the theme song from A Fistful of Dollars”)
- Musée Cognacq-Jay (“erotic genre scene paintings, which include what seem to be white slave and maid-on-mistress action”)
- L’Adresse: Musée de la Poste (“Are you the Rain Man? If so, you’ll love this museum”)
- Musée des Arts Décoratifs (“I’m pretty sure that this museum is like an abusive relationship")
- Maison de Balzac (“a big splotch of disappointment on my day”)
- Musée de la Contrefaçon (“organized by a manufacturers’ association which wants you to pay a couple of Euro for the privilege of walking through an infomercial about the evils of counterfeiting”)
- Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (“how can “upholstered in python-skin” seem so good in concept and yet be so lame in execution?”)
- Le Cabinet d’histoire du Jardin des Plantes (“On the plus side, it’s only about five rooms, and the exhibitions seems to rotate frequently, if you like your tedium contained and varied”)
Museum of the Parisian Sewers (“a huge boat that sewer workers ride in the biggest tunnels, like sewer pirates, lords of the shit sea!”)
City of Sciences and Industry (“the only kid I saw who appeared to be actually engaged in an exhibition was, on closer inspection, just leaning on the exhibition and playing his Gameboy”)
National Museum of the Sea (“displays that make you want to gouge out your own eyes”)
Bourdelle Museum (“it’s hard for me to make an unbiased judgment, considering just how much I hate the style of Rodin and, by extension, Bourdelle”)
Museum of the Art and History of Judaism (“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Judaism, But Were Afraid Would Be Too Boring to Ask About (And Guess What – You’re Right!)”)
Historical Center of the National Archives: Museum of the History of France (“If your life is not complete without carved wooden paneling, check it out”)
Museum of the Historical Collections of the Police Prefecture (“In my mind, my visit was going to be like making out with Sherlock Holmes while McGruff the Crime Dog brought us brandy from a cask around his neck”)
Pavillion of the Arsenal (“Yawn-fest”)
Museum of the Romantic Life (“by calling it the Museum of the Romantic Life you assure that some people will be fool enough to visit your craptastic collection”)
Sea Center – Oceanographic Institute (“signage which looked like it was produced by a kindergarten teacher to decorate her classroom”)
Doll Museum (“some arty concept-fashion dolls who are shown shaking their bare, and disturbingly realistic, tatas”)
Erotic Museum (“neither a museum nor especially erotic”)
Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation (“Soooooo many photographs of bleak factory landscapes”)
Like Foie Gras: You’re in Paris, So You Should Give it a Try
- Musée de la Franc-Maconnerie (“it was like Christmas and my birthday rolled up into one perfectly-sized collection of assorted weirdass”)
- Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (“balls-out decorative gilded mishmash”)
- Musée National Eugène Delacroix (“all of his female saints seem to be experiencing an ecstasy only partially spiritual”)
- Musée de l’Assistance Publique et Hôpitaux de Paris (“It’s totally worth going to this museum just to see the reactions of your friends – no one I’ve told so far has been able to resist laughing at the spectacular nerdiness of a trip to what is basically a Museum of Medicare”)
- Palais du Tokyo (“there were some cushions set up with a sign announcing story-time for 3 year olds next to a replica of the Unabomber’s cabin, but I wasn’t around for long enough to hear what sort of fairy tales those were”)
- Musée Guimet (“don’t be scared away by the probability that you’ll be the only person in the building who doesn’t possess a CD of whale sounds set to soft jazz”)
- Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature (“Just forget the Louvre – proceed directly here from the airport”)
Museum of the History of Medicine (“a decorative table top made out of dried blood, slices of liver, and human ears”)
Catacombs of Paris (“a strange combination of the tedious and the bizarre, like going out to dinner with both Alan Greenspan and Marilyn Manson”)
City of Architecture and Patrimony (“the most intense spatial analysis I perform is trying to answer the question ‘I wonder where they put the bathroom?’”)
Holocaust Memorial (“my only complaint is that its name doesn’t do it justice – it’s a complex”)
Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art (“Watch French toddlers frolic amidst his paintings of cartoonish and yet sexually suggestive tomcats!”)
The Red House - Antoine de Galbert Foundation (“am I supposed to know about Polish avant-garde electronic music?”)
Pasteur Museum (“contemplate still-well-preserved rabbit spinal cords in jars and visit Mr. and Mrs. Pasteurs’ bedrooms, just down the hall (in case he had a hankering to preserve some rabbit in the middle of the night?)”)
National Gustave Moreau Museum (“a mixture of Christian imagery with classical lore with sexy androgyny with blood with Indian architecture with hot demons”)
City of Music (“18th century music boxes used to teach birds how to sing (META)”)
- Museum of the Order of the Liberation (“Imagine digging through old trunks in the attic with your grandparents while they reminisce – if your grandparents were members of the French Resistance…”)
- “Paris Inondé 1910” (“What happens to polar bears when the zoo floods?”)
- Le Laboratoire (“neuroreceptors, the anthropology of space, and set theory which magically produce an algorithm which is to be translated into a building by a spider-like robot excreting bio-concrete”)
- Musée National du Moyen Age (“if you’re only going to like one set of tapestries, this is it (says me, who usually gets the dry heaves at the idea of looking at tapestries)”)
- Musée de Montmartre (“it needs a combination of Molly Ringwald and Thomas Hoving to clean up the flaking paint, throw away the cheesy/creepy mannequins, and whip up some better signage”)
- Musée de la Monnaie (“a perfect place to send your visiting parents for a morning while you run errands (aka, sleep off a hangover)”)
- Maison Européenne de la Photographie (“big caveat, the guy who showed me the most attention did have a goatee”)
- Musée de la Mode et du Textile (“well-organized signage in French and English, which I’m sure would have been very informative if I hadn’t spent the entire time thinking ‘pretty pretty WANT’”)
- Musée Jacquemart-André (“just to give you insight into the mysterious mind of an art historian, here’s what’s going on when we spent hours joyfully screaming at each other in a collector’s house museum: it’s like going on Maury to argue about paternity tests”)
- Musée Marmottan-Monet (“don’t be fooled into giving up your coat – I myself have vowed that the Marmottan-Monet Museum is the last time my fingers will turn into little ice-lumps.”)
- Musée Dapper (“one could describe the exhibition as 150 randomly-selected objects worn by dudes from several centuries ago to the present over a large portion of the globe’s landmass”)
- Maison de Victor Hugo (“the sheer enthusiasm shown by the French nation for their favorite literary lion – it’s like when a cute little kid insists on explaining how their Pokemon cards work (“and then, he moved to the Chanel Islands – bam! and then, Les Misérables was like level up!”)
- Grande Galerie de l’Evolution (“profound thought: giraffes are TALL”)
- Musée Carnavalet (“the third floor is a must-see if you start to feel all tingly at the thought of seeing the makeup kit Marie Antoinette used in prison”)
- Petit Palais (“if the security guards have time and inclination enough to make cute little jokes, you can be sure that the museum is delightfully obscure enough that their lives aren’t poisoned by tourists asking ‘is THIS where the Da Vinci code thing was?’”)
Museum of Tea (“ridiculously attractive men in linen suits inquire about your deepest tea desires”)
Grand Palais (“one of the main habitats for a fascinating French species, the Exhibitionist Retiree”)
Jeu de Paume (“Painfully hip – for example, you leave your coat and bag in a transparent locker in the lobby, so that nobody misses a moment of your totebag from a Swedish book bindery”)
Cernuschi Museum (“seems to have a total of three visitors at any one time, at least one of which got lost on the way to the Louvre”)
Nissim de Camondo Museum (“if you want to see top-of-the-19th-c.-line kitchens and bathrooms, here’s your chance”)
National Natural History Museum: Zoo of the Plant Garden (“merits a solid ‘meh’”)
Museum of Public Relations (“one notable commercial I watched featured, thanks to the miracles of computer animation, a buxom naked woman crouching inside of a giant condom, riding around in a sea of swimming penises”)
Pierre Berge and Yves Saint Laurent Foundation (“Good job with the spooky rotating manikins”)
Institute of the Arab World - Take Two (“when are you going to have another chance to chat with the dude who makes Hermès saddles featuring embroidered gold lace?”)
Jean-Jacques Henner Museum (“go if you like Henner or if, like Henner, you like plump, pale, auburn-headed girls”)
Clemenceau Museum (“an audio guide which only sporadically functioned – e.g., it went on and on about his childhood cradle, but refused to say anything when I punched in the number next to a set of dueling pistols”)
Adam Mickiewicz Museum, Boleslas Biegas Museum, and Chopin Salon (“enthusiasm about random stuff”)
Zadkine Museum (“’hey… if I polish this clump of tree roots enough it’ll look like a butt!’”)
Claude Monet Foundation (“Visiting the house is like walking around on a not-too-high-budget movie set – Whose Water? Whose Lilies? The Claude Monet Story”)
Arts and Professions Museum (“‘Look honey – this car has a propeller!’”)
- Fitzwilliam Museum (“a museum dependant on the whims of the eccentric cast of characters who decided that the National Gallery was just too concerned with authenticity or importance when accessing donations”)
- Ashmolean Museum (“probably still an essential part of your visit to Oxford, but you’ll have to cross my picket line – I’ll be the one holding the sign that says ‘Righteous Indignation!’”)
- Pitt-Rivers Museum (“a bush-whack through a thick forest of random objects so bizarre and wonderful that you emerge feeling both ecstatic and a bit nauseous”)
- Gallery of the Academy (“awash with disappointed tourists”)
- Medici-Riccardi Palace (“’Hey Jesus – you need some myrrh? We got your myrrh right here!’”)
- Medici-Riccardi Palace, Museum of Marbles (“a new museum in its basement, right by the toilets (just follow the smell of open drains)”)
- Silver Museum (“the Medicis out-blinged any MTV Cribs episode ever”)
- Palatine Gallery (“ceilings adorned with mythological scenes painted in the 19th century ‘naked hero with conveniently placed sword because we don’t look at genitals, no no no’ style”)
- Modern Art Gallery (“a tabletop sculpture of a secretly pregnant nun, cowering in a corner”)
- Laurentian Library (“cramped wooden benches onto which the books were chained, leading me to picture all Renaissance scholars as kleptomaniac dwarfs”)
- Uffizi (“the Ron Jeremy of museums”)
- The Last Supper of the Church of St. Apollonia (“all the Apostles look like rough characters who just got done with a long day of stealing whiskey down at the wharfs”)
- Strozzi Palace (“mainly notable for being open on Mondays”)
