The Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is one of the fourteen museums that belong to the city of Paris. It takes up the entire eastern wing of the Palais de Tokyo and has a permanent collection of “over 15,000 works illustrating the major currents of twentieth and twenty-first century art”. Read More …
The Cognacq-Jay Museum has nothing to do with Hennessy, Remy Martin, Courvoisier, or Martell. Rather, it was named after Ernest Cognacq (1839-1928) and his wife Marie-Louise Jaÿ (1838-1925), the founders and first owners of the Samaritaine department store on Rue de Rivoli in Paris. Cognacq and Jaÿ both grew up Read More …
Désamiantage is a new French word I learned recently. It means asbestos removal, and is one of the reasons the Centre Pompidou aka Beaubourg will be closed for five years, from 2025 to 2030. Originally the closure was scheduled for 2023 to 2027, but it has been postponed because of Read More …
In October 2013 the Rodin Museum presented an exhibition of twenty-two sculptures of Camille Claudel (1864-1943), including some that had not been on display for several years during the ongoing renovation of the museum. The exposition’s introductory brochure said that Camille Claudel “has become an almost too familiar figure today: Read More …
When I saw this house, my first thought was: “I’m glad I don’t have to pay their heating bills.” Perhaps that is why the “Private Museum” in the Heidi Weber House was only open during the summer months, if at all, because it would have been too expensive to heat. Read More …
There has been some sort of castle or palace on this spot since the year 999, at least. In its current form as a palace, it was first built in the eighteenth century for the ruling Count Wilhelm Heinrich of Nassau-Saarbrücken, but has been added to since then and was Read More …
The three big museums of Metz are all together in one complex, called La Cour d’or (The Golden Courtyard). The first is the archeology museum, which was built on the site of the ancient Roman baths that were excavated here starting in 1932. As in Saarbrücken, which is 60 km Read More …
Paris has finally found a good use for its Bourse de Commerce, an impressive circular building that was originally used as a wheat market in the eighteenth century. (I imagine that this was where Balzac’s Père Goriot made his fortune as a wholesale grain dealer during the French Revolution.) François Read More …
The Cluny Museum (National Museum of the Middle Ages) in the Latin Quarter of Paris has reopened after being closed for a year and a half. The displays have been totally reorganized and are now mainly in chronological order. Ramps and elevators have been installed to connect the different levels Read More …
Admission to the German Pharmacy Museum is included in the ticket for Heidelberg Castle. The museum is located in one of the castle buildings called the Ottheinrichbau, which is mainly a ruin but still has enough usable rooms to house a museum. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Ottheinrichbau was named Read More …