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Hibiscus on the Champ de
Mars. To reach the Branly
A very old tree on the Champ de
Mars.
The entrance to the Musée du
Quai Branly is very near
The |
Sunday, July 8 Yesterday we
finally went to the Musée
du Quai Branly, the new museum that I wrote about last year. Every time we attempted to go last year,
the lines were very long. Either that
or the weather was too nice to spend a day indoors. That’s what
almost always happens when we go to a museum.
It takes the entire day, or just about. I am the kind of person who must read every
plaque, every information sheet, and must listen to the audioguide if there
is one. So it takes a long time. I want to know everything. Tom is
somewhat the same way, and he is very patient with my obsession. I’ve never
been to a museum quite like the Branly before. It is a museum of primitive and tribal
(indigenous?) art from the four corners of the Earth: Asia, Africa, “Oceania” (south Pacific),
and the The Branly is
strictly limited to art. For example,
in the displays for the The audioguide
was superb. The narrator was an
American (not a Brit), and the script was thorough and very well
written. The audioguides were
definitely worth the extra 7 euros for two.
(There was no way I could listen to and try to decipher French for five hours.) One of the
reasons we went to the Branly yesterday was that today is the last day for
the special exhibit on New Ireland
– a place I was unaware of – an island province in There was a
humorous moment in the Last year, at
the beginning of the summer when the Branly opened, there was some debate and
controversy about it. Some argued that
it was arbitrary to put all these disparate collections together in one
museum; that it was somehow insulting to these cultures because the real
reason the collections exist is that these cultures were subjected to
European colonialization. That criticism
has evaporated, and I can see why. It
was stunningly remarkable how similar some of the artwork was – even from
cultures on opposite sides of the globe.
For example, bark paintings from Aboriginal tribes were strikingly
similar in style, color, and pattern, to some of the animal skin paintings by
Native Americans. I had my
moments of cynicism, however. For
example, when I saw a mask that very artistically depicted a bird with a
snake in its mouth, I thought, “what a great, stylistic way to portray an
osprey who has just caught a snake, and who is quite proud of it.” The audioguide, however, tried to claim
that this mask showed the classic conflict between heaven and Earth, with the
bird representing heaven and the snake representing Earth. I found myself doubting that, and choosing
to believe that some artist found a great way to portray a scene from nature. One of Tom’s
moments of cynicism came when the audioguide explained that monkeys were used
to represent the wind in some object, because “of course, one would choose a
monkey to represent wind.” Come on, he
thought. One would choose a bird to
represent wind, not a monkey! The building
and garden housing the Branly are just about as interesting (maybe even more
interesting, if that’s possible) as the collections. When we walk up to the When we
finally left the museum at the end of the day, we found the sun shining
solidly, not just momentarily, for the first time this week! Footsore, we trudged home through the
sunshine, smiling all the way. At the
organic bakery, we bought one and a half baguettes. I used part of the bread to make Lazy Flamingo-style
garlic bread to go with some lasagna we had from ED, the discount
grocery. There is nothing as good as
garlic bread made from a fine baguette, with lots of finely, freshly chopped
garlic, French unsalted butter, and a bit of salt. Yummm.
If only the Lazy Flamingo could get bread like this . . . if only the
French could learn to make garlic bread like the Lazy Flamingo does . . . the
world would be a slightly better place. Listen up,
European Commission. I’m spending less
of your absurdly inflated euros by cooking instead of eating out in
restaurants so much this summer! The
plan for tonight is chicken breasts sautéed in butter, shallots, garlic and
herbs, with Greek aubergines and puréed potatoes. The herbs are among the many plants growing
on the balcony. One of the
great things about all the rain we’ve had this week is that I have not had to
water the plants on the balcony. I
don’t think the owners of the apartment realize how much work this watering
normally is during the summer when it is hot and dry. Another reason
for us eating in instead of out is that the owners raised our rent on us this
year by a whopping 40% all at once!
So, if we are paying so much for the use of this cramped, tiny,
cluttered kitchen, I’m going to use it.
Along with the raise in the rent, too, came less closet space than
ever for our things. Well, the Tour
de France is on the TV today, and the scenery is lovely southeastern |
