The Rodin Museum(s)

When you go to Paris or to Philadelphia, please, please, please go to the Rodin Museum(s). We have now been to both, and each was an extremely wonderful experience. When we went to the one in Philly, we were grouped with a tour of blind people who had special permission to touch all the pieces and whose tour guide emphasized the musculature of the statues, etc. As the only seeing people on the tour, the leader didn't want to leave us out, and we too were encouraged to rub our hands on the statues and to experience them that way. That may be my single favorite trip to any museum because of that tactile aspect.

But the Rodin Museum in Paris is fabulous as well, and of course it's housed in a gorgeous "hôtel" (more on that word another time, but you can see it in the picture below, next to the building with the gold dome--that's Napoleon's Invalides, where he's buried, by the way) that Rodin and many other artists actually inhabited. There are so many things to say, but I think I'll let a couple of pictures speak for me, though they fall FAR short of the experience of seeing these works in the round and in their "3-D-ness." (For the record, Ken had a headache, hence the matching pose.)