Le Pompidou.

The Pompidou.

One thing that Paris has is museums. I am not terribly interested in them, but Monday the 30th I decided to go the Centre George Pompidou, which is the main modern art museum. I left a little disappointed — having been to the New York MOMA over Christmas, I didn't see many different things in their permanent collection. Still, it was all "great" art, which is more than I could say for the special exhibitions. One of them was about Samuel Beckett, and it seemed fairly interesting, but I felt like I should have known more about Beckett to really appreciate it. The other special exhibition, "Air de Paris", was all art by Parisiens, I believe, and it mostly sucked. There was, however, one piece that got me so much that I broke their rule prohibiting taking pictures (I hereby apologize to the staff of the museum and to the city of Paris). It is by Philippe Rahm, and the sign said this:

"Despite appearances, the environment recreates an actual night time scene as the orangey-yello [sic] stimulates the production of melatonin, a sleep hormone. The speakers broadcast eighteen Diurnes, which are inversions of the eighteen Nocturnes for piano by Irish composer John Field (1782-1837)."

Here are the illicit still images and video of this piece, Diurnisme:





Luckily for me, there is no such prohibition for the permanent collection. I took too many to upload here, so may I direct you to my Flickr set of Pompidou pictures?

http://flickr.com/photos/montchristopherhubbard/sets/72157600192964767/


The other cool thing about the Pompidou is the view of Paris from the top floor. You can see Notre Dame to the south, la Tour Eiffel to the southeast, and Sacre Coeur and Montmartre to the north.

In the plaza in front of the museum, artisans sell trinkets (is it weird for me to call them "artisans", yet use the low word "trinket"?), folk musicians play, and street performers entertain. Two young people were walking across the square, holding a sign: "Free hugs." I didn't need one, but still I hustled over to catch them, and got two good hugs. And they each got one good hug, I hope. The Free Hug movement is one of my favorite things about the world today. I am proud of my generation for it.