Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme Mahj / Centre George Pompidou

Thursday, Luce was with her grandmother again, so I decided to spend the afternoon at the Centre George Pompidou, the modern art museum in Paris. But when I got off the subway, I saw a sign for the Jewish Art/History Museum, along with one for the Picasso Museum. I decided to change plans and see two small museums instead of one big one.

The Jewish Art/History Museum was very interesting! Most of it, however, was in French so I think there's a lot I missed. But they include free audio guides in english, so that definitely helped. Pictures were not allowed inside the museum, but here's a picture of the courtyard.



I spent longer in the museum than I expected, so I decided to change plans again and save the Picasso Museum for the next day, and go see at least part of the Centre George Pompidou (which is open until 10:00 p.m.). The building is actually fairly controversial- a lot of Parisians consider it the ugliest building in the city... I don't know that I would call it "ugly" but it's definitely very different looking! But a benefit of all the glass/plastic is the amazing views going up (you can see the Eiffel Tower, the Hotel des Invalides, Notre Dame, even Sacre-Coeur depending on which way you turn.


I am sort of a fan of modern art- some of it I find interesting, like this one artist who collaged ink drawings, magazine pictures, and comics; his was was really good I thought. But there was also this exhibit called elles@centrepompidou that features all female artists. I think it's one of those new waves of feminism, where it's anti-feminism because it's celebrating the women as artists rather than as FEMALE artists. Some parts of the exhibit were good- they had one room with just a projection of different photographs of all sorts of things, like trees and people, projected onto the floor; another room was a slideshow of photographs that followed different couples (my descriptions of these make them sound really simplistic, but they're not, I promise). But other parts I thought were just too bizarre- such as the one room showing a video of a naked woman on a beach, hula-hooping with a ring of barbed wire (I was going to include a picture but I don't think I will). Occasionally they'd do close-ups to show the blood running from her hips. That's the kind of modern art I guess I'm just not "modern" enough for. So overall it was a good trip but a little too out-there for me.

And side note: I went back to the Picasso Museum the next day, only to find out it's CLOSED until 2012! Bummer!