THE AMAZING MUSEE DU QUAY BRANTLY
2010
On Monday I went off to Bon Marché in the morning, while Oswaldo preferred to check out the academic bookstores near Sorbonne. I found a Grande Epicerie food mecca behind the department store and brought raviolis back for our lunch at home. Oswaldo then had to meet a French colleague, and I stayed working on an assignment, until he got home and we stayed in eating leftovers.
On Tuesday we feel more energized and take the RER to Pont d’Alma, a short walk from the new museum, dedicated to Oceania, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We are bowled over when we reach the impossibly high glass walls and see the rust-colored building, sinuously weaving on stilts through fabulous vegetation of high grasses and shrubs, full of little birds. The building is covered in shutters, which regulate the light and exposure. It’s the most exciting building I’ve seen in a long time. And the collection! Something to be seen to be believed. We start in Oceania with exquisite wooden carvings and masks, on to Africa and then Asia with wonderful pieces, including embroidered clothes and jewelry. By the time we reach the Americas we are sated, but still appreciate, for example, a tiny polar bear carved in bone by eskimos and a huge Sioux feather headdress. Everything is displayed against shadowy dark backgrounds with really good lighting. We take a break to eat in the cafeteria, which like the museum cafeteria in Malba, Buenos Aires, serves creative and visually striking dishes. I have small roasted polenta cakes with nuts inside and a mushroom and pesto sauce. Oswaldo orders pizza, which tastes as if it were homemade. Back in the museum we admire a gigantic Canadian totem pole in the lobby as well as a huge Ester Island head, before heading into an amusing exhibition called Baba Bling - signs of wealth from Singapore. Energized by everything we’ve seen, we feel like walking - we are right next to the Eiffel tower, which we haven’t seen yet - and then we take a really long walk through the back streets. When we reach the Esplanade des Invalides, we are startled to see rows and rows of waiting police cars. Some of them are waiting in the streets, looking like robocops in full riot gear. We ask one of them and they say the demonstration is due in half an hour. We prefer to leave the area...
At night Davicho, Oswaldo’s best friend from his youth in Buenos Aires, and who lives on the island of Formentera now, comes over and we share a bottle of chilled pink champagne and then go off to have a delicious dinner around the corner in family run L’Epigram, which Time Out has deemed Best New Eating Experience.
http://gallery.me.com/schateaubriand/101482 The museum
http://gallery.me.com/schateaubriand/101489 Dinner with Davicho
A STUPENDOUS MUSEUM EXPERIENCE, AND DINNER WITH AN OLD, OLD FRIEND
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
BEHIND HUGE TRANSPARENT GLASS WALLS LIES JEAN NOUVEL’S MASTERPIECE, MUSEE DES HOMMES, SURROUNDED BY HIGH GRASSES AND LOW TREES, MAKING YOU HEAR BIRDSONG RATHER THAN TRAFFIC
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