Le Musee D'Orsay

30 May 2005

Le Musee D'Orsay

When my family visited Paris when I was twelve years old and fifteen years old, we did not visit le Musée D’Orsay; I now know that we made a mistake. Having now visited it with almost-twelve and thirteen-and-a-half-year-old girls who adored this museum, I wish my siblings and I could have experienced this museum back in the 1970s. C’est vraiment magnifique. An old train station (think Grand Central converted into a stunning museum), it has mostly works from around the mid-1800s to around 1920, an art period that my children like very much and a style that is recognizably Paris. There was an incredible special temporary exhibit on the neo-impressionists, entire rooms filled with the works of Van Gogh, Degas, Sisley, Manet, Monet, etc. We played “I Spy” throughout the museum, finding unusual things like cats or mummies in paintings. Katie picked three sculptures as definitively “the best,” and I may have to agree with her choices. Her first two were of a weeping child and a different child being kissed by an angel. Her final choice is unusual for her:

horrified by all things immodest, she (unlike her mother) would never select a nude, but even she found one called “Le Cycliste” gorgeous and perfect. Just wait until she sees the David in a week or so.