aMUSEEing

There are so many place I'd really love to see but truly don't have time for. The first half of my program is completely ruled by classes and homework, and I feel swamped. Tomorrow morning is the first time in two weeks I'll be able to squeeze in some laundry, for example.

And it's not that I'm lazy: it's just, at home in the US, I get everything done after 6pm. Obviously, that sort of time schedule isn't embraced here, not even in such a cosmopolitan city. It's very rare that stores or businesses stay open, or at least friendly, past 5 or 6. With the light getting dim around the same time (plus the fact that I'm usually exhausted after a full day of classes all in French), I can't do anything productive until the weekends.

But today!

Le Musée Picasso!

I was eventually planning on trying to maybe get around to seeing this museum (...sigh), so I'm glad my art history class went today. The museum itself is beautiful, housed in the Hôtel Salé, a 17th century building in the Marais. The inside is full of embellished ceilings and small but well-lit rooms.

There is a collection showing the progression from studies for Dameoiselles to his cubism stuff, all the way to his collages and a return to drawing normal stuff. Obviously, I am a Picasso scholar. There's also supposedly a permanent collection downstairs, but we didn't look for it.

I really enjoyed some of it, and I truly wish I didn't have such a bad cough. I sort of ran away when I felt that tickle in my throat, rather than have French people stare at me while hemming and hawing. After I recovered, it was raining, so the sculpture garden was closed. We left after a quick hour looking around with my professor lecturing.

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France was the next stop for me. I had to do a project for the same class, and it was relatively nearby (about 10 minutes away by metro, at Bourse). We had to sign in for a seat in the enormous reading room, but it was worth it. What a beautiful room! It was sort of ridiculous: the ceiling soared up about 50 feet and ended in an opaque skylight. There were books on shelves all over the place, and people crouched over huge wooden tables with green library lights.

Of course, my glass-shattering cough echoed through the room-- chamber? -- and after half an hour, we were kicked out for the night anyways.

Love it.