It’s day 48, and I’ve visited 42 museums or exhibitions (including a couple I haven’t yet written up). Here’s a summary of my recommendations, in reverse chronological order:
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’”)
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”)
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”)
Kinda like Tripe: Good if That’s Your Thing
- 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?’”)
