La Musée and The Paris Marathon
April 2025 Newsletter
The Paris Marathon and La Musée
La Musée
The line of visitors headed to the Musée d’Orsay wrapped around three blocks on Paris’s Left Bank. Grey clouds hung overhead, and although the weather forecast hadn’t mentioned rain, those clouds looked like they would release cold, foreboding rain showers any minute. We stood close to each other, as I huddled together with hundreds of others who found unexpected patience when promised access to one of the most famous museums in the world. (This one is ranked among the top ten museums in the world.)
About 20 years ago, I visited the museum with my family and sat with them in the central atrium inside, sitting on the marble stairs, with our sketchbooks, drawing a few of the classic statues in our midst. The idea of sketching in museums had become a ritual (OK, perhaps enforced by Mom), as we carried our museum sketchbooks with us while we traveled the world.
This ritual began with a visit to the museum gift shop (which is where most visitors really want to go in the first place) to find a postcard of an object or painting that exists at that museum. Then, with our chosen postcard, we travel through the museum to find the object on our postcard.