Today was another museum day. I have long been a fan of le Centre Pompidou and I thought AJ might also enjoy the “inside out” art museum that it is. Michele metroed over to the museum with us and gave us the magic membership card that allows for free entry. It was nice to get in for free (for a change), as all of the museums charge a fair amount of Euros to visit. I believe I mentioned paying to climb stairs at the Eiffel Tour?? Is like zis.
Pompidou had one kids’ exhibit which we were more than happy to explore. I’ve never seen an exhibit like it: the idea was that there was a fictional Native American tribe (back when they would have first had contact with Europeans) that met some Europeans and exchanged totems. The tribe sent their spiritual leader to Europe with a carved totem pole and then waited months for him to come back. When he finally returned, he brought with him European surrealist art which the spiritual leader (as the resident expert on Europeans, of course) interpreted for them. For the exhibit there were four teepees, and they handed out audio players with headphones and flashlights. The audio guides would explain things and we went from teepee to teepee to listen to the different comments (both from a British woman and the tribe leader) and look at the different art. Sometimes the two voices “argued” over what the art meant. It was a fun and unique way to listen to different interpretations of the art and opened up the idea that art can mean different things to different people, depending on their own personal context.
Who knew art could be so interesting??? 🙂
We then quickly (there is no such thing as “slow viewing” when AJ is involved) looked at an exhibit on the Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi (who had designed the park we saw the day before). Despite the fact that modern architecture is not really big point of interest for AJ, he did look at the photos of Tschumi’s work and declared that the ‘tiny houses’ were cool.
With full brains and empty stomachs, we went outside and sat by the famous Stravinsky fountain for a picnic lunch. In addition to cool buildings and sculptures, there was some pretty impressive people watching. Since lunch is never enough, AJ convinced us to buy him some chocolate gelato to finish up his meal. Clever kid that one.
Our goal was to head home and meet up with one of Mike’s friends. Alas, when we got to the metro station to transfer, we found tons of people, and lots of cops in riot gear. I freaked a bit (it doesn’t really calm the nerves to see guys who look like they could be extras on robo-cop) and we then took the bus home — which turned out to be a bad plan, because we were at the extreme north of the city, and it took a good hour to get home with the intense traffic. Yes there were good views from the bus, but it was also packed full of people in the “deodorant lite” category which made sight seeing less desirable. AJ fell asleep on my lap and woke up confused, but not so confused that he forgot to suggest getting some chocolate.
Continuing on our American food theme, we got food to make dinner and I made chocolate chip cookie bars. Once again we were fortunate enough to have plenty of help eating them. 🙂
Highlights gallery at https://photos.smugmug.com/Family/2014/Europe-AprilMay/Highlights-May-5″.
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