February 7: Le Laboratoire (The Laboratory) (it’s an architecture gallery)

I love how pretentiously ridiculous contemporary architecture can be: whip together every popular science idea of the past five years, add some questionable new building material or technique, and voila! you have a model of a building that no one (including you) believes will/can ever be built. In this architecture gallery’s current exhibition, “An Architecture of the Humours” (until April 26, 2010), it’s 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. At least, I think that’s what is supposed to happen – the whole thing was so confusing that they assign you a personal guide when you come in the door, who explains the architectural idea at play. Afterwards there’s a library/media space where you can go and read all the books which inspired the project, including lots of science fiction (of course).

February 7: Musée National du Moyen Age (National Museum of the Middle Ages)

I’m having a bit of a crisis of identity here. When I first visited Paris, as a 19 year old, I was just thrilled to bits with the Museum of the Middle Ages. I sketched, I hung out in the courtyard, I told everyone that it was my favorite museum… and now I can’t figure out why. Sure, the setting is interesting – the Hôtel Cluny, a 16^th century castle (basically) with ancient Roman baths in the basement. Sure, the art is cool – a nice assortment of different types of medieval objects, from stained glass to armor, with the high point being the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries - 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). It’s just that I can’t quite figure out why I was doodling “Mrs. Hôtel Cluny” on my sketchpad and thinking about where we would go on our honeymoon (the English countryside – duh – so the unicorn could visit its family). Maybe it’s just that I’m no longer 19 – sigh.

February 6: Museum Tip of the Day: How to Avoid Me Wanting to Kill You

I love Italian Renaissance art, and Italian Renaissance art is full of representations of the martyrdoms of Catholic saints. Thus, I have a rich mental repertoire of ways to imagine you dying when I see you touching art in museums: flaying, red hot pinchers, strategically placed arrows followed by beheading, etc.

Look – I’m no angel. Once I touched the cheek of an ancient Roman bust (I was 16, it was Utah, so…). Thus, I can assure you that statues feel like any other piece of stone. If you’re curious, touch the walls or touch the floor, but keep your filthy, destructive paws off of the statuary.

So – look with your eyes, not your hands, or else know that I am imagining your eyes of a platter.

February 4: Musée de Montmartre

You know how in ‘80’s movies, there’s always the girl who starts the movie unpopular but, thanks to new clothes/ makeover/ taking off her glasses, ends up as a hot babe? The Montmartre Museum is like that, pre-makeover. It’s got a lot of potential – the original sign from the Lapin Agile, Toulouse-Lautrec posters, a zinc bar hidden from the Germans’ metal-collecting campaigns – but 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 with a bit more context and a lot fewer English errors. As it is, it’s not worth the 8 euro unless you are really, really obsessed with la vie boheme (in which case you’re probably backpacking around Europe and wouldn’t pay 8 euro for anything).

February 1: Institut du Monde Arabe

One reason to visit a museum is to see visually-compelling things, whether they’re beautiful or just strange. But even museums well-stocked with fascinating things have cases, walls, even entire rooms full of what I’m going to call “little sh*ts” – fragmentary figurines, a heap of pottery shards, manuscripts without pictures in a language you don’t understand – visually boring things that you walk past without pausing. Now, I played at a semi-pro level in the little sh*ts game for several years, so I know that even little sh*ts can be fascinating, but only if you’re given enough information about them. Give me a pottery shard, and I’ll give you a history of trade routes, eating habits, funerary ritual, and so on and so on until you have to distract me (hint: say something like “is it happy hour yet?”).

But for little sh*ts to be even remotely interesting, there has to be interesting information available, and that is just not the case in the Institute of the Arab World. 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. Case after case of manuscripts labeled only with their name in Arabic, fragments of architectural decoration without any indication of what type of building they came from, little pieces of fabrics – from clothes? furnishings? Who knows?

I didn’t go to the special exhibition, so I’ll update if all of the museum’s visually compelling works are hiding in there… but until then, go to the Louvre if you want to see more than the little sh*ts of the Arab world.

January 31: Musée du Quai Branly

I’m a big fan of this museum for the following reasons:

• the architecture: it’s modern, it’s set in a garden landscape which sprouts giant glow-sticks at night, it’s swirly, it has organic, earthy forms which only very occasionally make me feel like I’m in the fake caves of the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ride at Disneyland.
• the history: in a bid for cultural immortality, Jacques Chirac ordered the creation of this museum by, basically, emptying out several other older museums. Take that, Musee de l’Homme!
• the collections: so… to break the possibly bad news: it’s an ethnological museum. We’re talking masks, ceremonial robes, shadow puppets, etc. from Oceania, Africa, Asia, South America, Australia, and wherever else French colonies and colonial collecting practices roamed in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. But wait, keep reading! Even if you’re not interested in non-Western cultures, I think you’ll be seduced by:
• the presentation: the museum devotes equal efforts to making the objects look good and making them revelatory of their cultures. This kind of arrangement is sadly rare, and the reason it’s so valuable is that it makes the museum worth multiple visits. You can go a couple of times just to look at the beautiful things, floating in dramatic darkness in minimalist glass cases which bring the works into pleasing juxtapositions as your viewpoint changes. But then you can return to read the texts and watch the hours of video and learn about the objects’ uses in their home culture.

January 28: Musée de la Monnaie (Museum of the Mint)

I’m beginning to think that every branch of the French government has a museum: public hospitals, the postal service, now the national mint, and I haven’t even made it to the police museum yet.

Not a lot of surprises here: you start with ancient Greek money and work your way up to the Monnaie’s operations in the 20^th century. There are some mildly interesting things, such as a display on how Revolutionary authorities ran out of precious metals and tried to coin money from melted-down church bells (which presented all sorts of problems, since the bells apparently thought “screw you, Supreme Being” and stuck in the molds).

But I did think of a perfect use for this museum. It’s free, it’s not too overwhelming (three big rooms – about an hour for someone who’s really into it), it’s got both historical interest and machines, it’s really easy to find (in a bigass building facing the river), and it’s surrounded by antique shops… in short, a perfect place to send your visiting parents for a morning while you run errands (aka, sleep off a hangover). One of them can shop, and the other can think about the Vichy government or how s/he wishes that her/his home drill press was as big as the Mint’s. Forget “Paris with Children” – we need more “Paris with Parents” activities.