The Small Museums of Paris

Toronto Globe and Mail, March 2002

Paris residents often wonder at the long queues that build up outside the Louvre museum during the summer, round the famous glass that look so alluring in the middle of that old palace. Not just because there's a back entrance off a nearby street where the queues are much shorter. But why, they ask, spend your few days in the city at one of those big, crowded warehouses like the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay, instead of the scores of other museums around the city?

The city has an extraordinary wealth of museums, medium-sized and small, where you can get a more manageable dose of culture without the queues and crowds. Instead of struggling to take in everything from Assyrian relics to the giant oil paintings of Géricault and Davide, you can spend an calm afternoon in the Marais just getting to know Picasso, before a few beers in a sidewalk café. Or visit Rodin's house on the Rive Gauche. So visit the hordes of one of great Parisian art collectors like Edouard André, and get a feel for what life was like for the wealthy and tasteful citizens of Paris in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Musée Rodin
This is one of the few single-artist museums to make it onto the tourist trail, but it's none the worse for that. It's tucked in round the corner from the massive Invalides military museum that houses, among other things, the tomb of Napoleon. You'll see the massively famous sculpture of the Thinker – The image of this naked man hunched over with his chin resting on his hand is familiar from posters and art books around the world. There's also the impressive bronze Gates of Hell, and hundreds of other examples of Rodin's lifelike studies of the human body in marble and bronze, including the famous Kiss.

Hôtel Biron, 77 rue de Varenne, 7th. +33 (0) 1 44 18 61 10.
Open Tue-Sun 9.30am-5.45pm Apr-Sept. Metro Varenne.

Musée Picasso
Picasso left a trail of museums wherever he stayed – From Barcelona to Paris to the South of France. This branch holds an impressive display of paintings, particularly from the 20s and 30s, displayed alongside some of Picasso's own collections of African statues, which were a massive influence on his own work. Picasso's found-object sculptures surprise many visitors, many of whom only know Picasso as a painter. Look out for a wonderfully muscular and energetic goat, made of palm leaves, pots, wood and plaster.

Hôtel Salé, 5 rue de Thorigny, 3rd. +33 (0) 1 42 71 25 21.
Open Wed-Mon 9.30am-6pm. Metro St-Paul.

Atelier Brancusi
The studio of the Romanian-born modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi was originally in a quiet area near the edge of the city, but it has since been faithfully reconstructed in a central location right in front of the Centre Georges Pompidou museum. Visitors can peer through glass walls to a forest of pillar-like sculptures arranged more or less as they were on Brancusi's death. Buyers would select an object from this warehouse/gallery/sculpture park, and Brancusi would simply replace it with another one. Next door, you can see his workshops, with many of his tools still in place, down to the overhead pulley system for lifting the work and counterbalancing the heavy tools.

Piazza Beaubourg, 4th. +33 (0) 1 44 78 12 33. Metro Hôtel de Ville.
Open 1-9pm Wed-Sun. Free with admission to Centre Georges Pompidou.

Musée Bourdelle
Antoine Bourdelle, a pupil of Rodin, hasn't seen his reputation survive as well as his master's, but this museum is still worth a visit to get a feel for how a successful sculptor's studio was organised – It's almost like a factory. You can see how Bourdelle's designs for public commissions were developed using small scale maquettes, and how they were then built, often in several different materials, before a final version was shipped off to decorate a public square or building.

16-18 rue Antoine-Bourdelle, 15th. +33 (0) 1 49 54 73 73
Open 10am-5.40pm Tue-Sun. Metro Montparnasse-Bienvenüe.

For more figurative sculpture in the tradition of Rodin, visit the Musée Maillol, (59-61 rue de Grenelle, 7th +33 (0) 1 42 22 59 58). It's also home to Marcel Duchamp's famous signed urinals. There are also museums devoted to Dali and Delacroix, Dubuffet, Moreau, and several others – Take your pick.

Individual Collectors

Musée Cognacq-Jay
Ernest Cognacq founded Paris' famous La Samaritaine department store in 1870, and it's still open today. In the following years he and his wife Marie-Louise Jay built an impressive art collection, now housed on the rue Elzévir. It's a good chance to see many of the French artists in whom he specialised, like Watteau and Boucher, at the same time as some more familiar names like Rembrandt and Canaletto. But the real pleasure is to see them not in a sterile museum environment but something more like the context Cognacq might have displayed them in – A grand house decorated with furniture and ornaments from the time.

Hôtel Donon, 8 rue Elzévir, 3rd. +33 (0) 1 40 27 07 21
Open 10am-5.40pm Mon-Sun. Metro St-Paul.

Jacquemart-André
Another husband and wife team, Edouard André and Nélie Jacquemart built a collection that even Ernest Cognacq couldn't match. Even in the 19th century, masterpieces as important as Paolo Uccello's St George and the Dragon simply weren't on the market. Their collection includes early renaissance Italian masters like Perugino, Tintoretto, Botticelli and Mantegna. The rest of the house is decorated with Tiepolo frescos and works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Titian.

158 boulevard Haussmann, 8th. +33 (0) 1 42 89 04 91
Open daily 10am-6pm. Metro Miromesnil.

Escaping Art altogether
An art lover could easily spend a month in Paris and still find new and exciting art treasures in the city's museums, but if art is just an interest rather than an obsession, it can get a little too much. Luckily Paris has some fine non-art museums, where visitors can relax and exercise some other parts of their brains.

Cité des Sciences et Industrie
Housed in a large park in the north-west of Paris, this massive science museum offers a fascinating reminder that Paris is not just a city of great artistic achievement but a scientific centre as well. There's a fantastic range of exhibits here, including a real submarine, and a waterwheel which provides a mesmeric demonstration of chaos theory. This is one of the few museums in Paris that kids are likely to enjoy, as a large part of the museum is devoted especially to them. The best way to get here (if time allows) is to take a canal boat from the Place de la Bastille, which goes underground for several hundred metres before gliding through some of the prettiest parts of town to finish at the Cité.

30 Avenue Corentin Cariou, 19th. +33 (0)1 40 05 12 12.
Open Tues-Sun, 10am to 6pm. Metro Porte de la Villette.
http://www.cite-sciences.fr

Canal trips – Call Canauxrama +33 (0)1 42 39 15 00.
Boats leave from Port de l'Arsenal, opposite 50 bd de la Bastille, twice daily at 9.45am and 2.30pm.