So today was Monday, boo for that. I had class, and then Megan and I decided to go to the Musée National du Moyen-Age, aka the Musée Cluny. It's called that because the private mansion it is housed in is named Cluny. It had a lot of really cool artifacts, including a famous tapestry called the Lady and the Unicorn, or La Dame et la Licorne in French. The paintings and artifacts they had were mostly religious, since that was generally the focus of the Middle Ages. The hôtel particulier itself was just a beautiful building, right in the center of the Latin Quarter. We had a nice afternoon break there before we had to get down to logistics like grocery shopping and planning meals for the week.
After that, I had to go to a visit for Art History at L'Institut de France. L'Institut de France is both a building and an organization. Typical of French bureaucracy, there is a government agency which houses things like artistic institutions and L'Academie Francaise, which controls and regulates the French language. It is generally not open to the public, but the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (school of fine arts) which is associated with the institute (basically where all the really great young artists go) was giving an exhibition on the human body. This apparently has something to do with what we are discussing in class, so we got tickets to the exhibition. First our teacher walked us around the building, which is across the Seine from the Louvre, and showed us where artists used to compete for the Prix du Rome (a prestigious prize for art students which allowed free art study in Rome), which we just learned about in class. Being in a city like Paris is so amazing because you get to see all the practical applications of something like art history. The exhibition itself wasn't thrilling, just a lot of sculptures of naked people. I found the view outside of the Seine at sunset much more interesting.
Anyway, check out the pics! http://picasaweb.google.com/amandamarz
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