Pagoda Atelier at Musée Cernuschi

Most of the museums in Paris give workshops (ateliers) to kids on some Wednesdays and Saturdays.  We have not yet managed to enroll in any at the big museums because it is a competitive sport.  If you thought lining up a little early at the Lindenlea Community Centre to get your spot in Preschool Art was hard, this is a whole 'nother level.  However, there are lots of museums, so we thought we would see what some of the others have to offer.  Pierre found a Wednesday pagoda building workshop at Musée Cernuschi  for ages 6-8.  Perfect.

Pagoda Girls

The girls and I took the bus across town and found the museum.  It is within the gates of Parc Monceau, so I figured it the museum and workshop were a flop we had a good plan B.

 

According to pamphlet I picked up at the museum, Henri Cernuschi was an economist and banker.  "Born in Milan in 1821, Italian patriot; Enrico Cernuschi was forced to take refuge in France in 1850, after the Italian Revolution of 1848."  He fled to France where as an economist and a banker he amassed a fortune by the end of the Second Empire (1852).  Once again he became involved in politics and had to flee France after the Paris Commune.  He fled to England, the U.S., and then took a steamer to Asia.  He was accompanied by his friend Théodore Duret, who was an art critic and a supporter of the Impressionist movement.  His year and a half trip around the world, ended with buying close to 5000 works of art in Japan and China.

 

His collection was exhibited when he returned and contributed to the emergence of Japonism.  At the same time, he commissioned an architect to build him a mansion to house his collection.  The house was built as a museum and has many skylights and some rooms that were built specifically for some works of art.  He donated the mansion and the art to the City of Paris.

Lillian and Sylvia were the only kids at the atelier!  The teacher was excellent and spent over an hour with them looking at a few pieces of art and making the pagodas.  The started with this perfume burner.  I learned that a dragon has the characteristics of 4 animals: snake, fish, stag, and tiger.  I am not sure if this a Japanese of French idea.  Most of the art in the museum is Chinese, but there are a few Japanese pieces.  The other Japanese pieces are sometimes shown in temporary exhibits.

The workshop was held in a room that was built especially for an enormous Japanese Buddha.  The top of the room is encircled by tiles with the names of major Asian cities.  The room has huge windows that look out onto Parc Monceau.

The Buddha was taken apart, shipped to France, and reassembled.  He is immense.  I really liked how he was perched in the middle of the room looking out the windows into the park.

 

Death masks from a group originally from Siberia 



My audio guide said this cat was, "the Mona Lisa of Asian art."  There is a baby clinging to the tiger.  It looks like maybe the tiger is protecting him, but it is hard to be sure.  The tiger was used to hold a fermented drink used in ancestor worship.

Lady Musicians on Horseback.  They would have been put in a tomb to provide company and music for the deceased.

 

I look forward to exploring more of these small City of Paris museums.  They are manageable with the girls and the houses and the history of their inhabitants are always fascinating.

 

My friend Lori accompanied me to the museum.  Our husbands are both economists like Cernuschi.   I am pretty sure that Pierre has already commissioned an architect to begin working on our mansion.

 

Lori and her daughter, one of the girls' favorite people, took the bus home with us.  Sylvia likes to take the bus and she likes Katherine even more.  Great end to a great outing.

Journées du Patrimoine--National Archives

This weekend was Journées du Patrimoine, a kind of Heritage Weekend open house.  Buildings that are usually closed to the public are opened up for tours.  Many of the sights also have special activities for kids.  Pierre researched and decided we should start at the National Archives because it was one of the places with kids' activities.

 

 

You can see the tables for the kids' activities tucked into the gallery.

 

Don't forget that these are the French National Archives and playing or walking on the grass is forbidden.

 

 

The activities were excellent.  They had put the archives' experts to work at the kids' tables.  Lillian is practicing her script so that she can write a secret Latin message.  This message was, of course, sealed.

 Lillian has some nice new glasses.  After our trip to Wisconsin, her old glasses were in bad shape.  They had fallen into the lake at least once and had spent some time in Bo the dog's mouth. 

 Sylvia made a plaster seal with the archives' seal restorer.

 

 The girls played a French history game.  They were the game pieces and walked through the game while rolling an enormous foam die.  Lillian won her round and I learned a thing or two.

 For winning the history game, Lillian won a poster of  the Declaration des droits de l'homme

It is now hanging on the wall in her room.

We signed up for the tour of the archives.  Before we even entered the building it became apparent that it was not a family activity and children were not welcome.  Pierre shoved the tickets into my hands and ran back to the game area with the girls.

Pictures are forbidden.

The man who gave the tour was obviously an expert on the history of the archive buildings.  He knew lots of dates.  He did not talk a lot about what is actually in the archives building.  Besides the state records, there are some pretty amazing historical artifacts under glass.

For instance, the tour guide did not have much to say about this.

This is Marie Antoinette's last letter.  She was told she would be executed and began writing a letter to her sister-in-law asking her to take her children.  I was surprised that the French was very modern and the writing was easy to read.  It is a heartbreaking letter.  She did not finish it and it fell into the hands of Robespierre.

 

By the time the tour was over we were all starving.
We ordered some crepes to go and the girls waited in front of these pretty blue doors.

We sat near the Centre Pompidou and had a picnic. 

Lillian kept saying, "We should have more days like this!"

 

 In other news, this tricky one and her older sister managed to avoid fish Friday in the lunchroom by staying on the playground for two hours.  Clever.  Their mother was not pleased.  It was fish Monday today.  If you check out the following link, you can see why they may be having a hard time September lunch menu and dinner suggestions  The menu has helpful dinner suggestions, too.  It makes me laugh.

Walking around Paris

 Today is Wednesday and there is never any school on Wednesday.  We often walk to the American Library and check out some books.  Sylvia continues to be obsessed with The Boxcar Children and Lillian has finally moved on from Harry Potter to Percy Jackson and other Rick Riordan series.  I have joined two book clubs and trying to keep up. 

 

We often are so busy doing what we are doing that we forget to look around and remember that there are some pretty amazing, pretty French things going on all around us.

 Our walk to the library is right through Palais de Challiot, where everyone gathers to take photos of the Eiffel Tower, over the Seine, and right by the Eiffel Tower. 

 These two are no longer sharing a room; maybe that is why they are holding hands.

Yep, there is is.

Lovely statues on a bridge over the Seine

 

I walked out of my doctor's office and what did I see?

Les Invalides



Our lovely Argentinian friends had us to dinner this weekend and we brought a cake.

There really are delicious things to eat almost everywhere

Do you think she likes cake?

Parc de la Villette

This weekend we headed to Parc de la Villette.  The weather can't decide if it is summer of fall.  This weekend it was smoking hot and today it is cold and rainy.  Parc de la Villete is on the outskirts of Paris and is the venue for Cité de la Science and of Cité de la Musique.  To learn more and to see some cool photos, click here: official website or here: wikipedia

 

Here is the history asaccording to Wikipedia:
The park was designed by Bernard Tschumi, a French architect of Swiss origin, who built it from 1984 to 1987 on the site of the huge Parisian abattoirs (slaughterhouses) and the national wholesale meat market, as part of an urban redevelopment project. The slaughterhouses, built in 1867 on the instructions of Napoléon III, had been cleared away and relocated in 1974. Tschumi won a major design competition in 1982–83 for the park, and he sought the opinions of the deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida in the preparation of his design proposal.
Since the creation of the park, museums, concert halls, and theatres have been designed by several noted contemporary architects, including Christian de Portzamparc, Adrien Fainsilber, Philippe Chaix, Jean-Paul Morel, Méziane Azaïche, and Jean Nouvel, in addition to Mr. Tschumi.

We were looking for some place green to spend out time on a hot, hot day.  We also knew that with our family science pass, we could always duck into Cité de la Science.  We did not have a good map of the park and therefore mostly just wandered.  We began by finding a playground.  The playground was packed full of very fit twenty and thirty year old men.  Not a bad place to be.  The guys were all doing crazy athletic feats using the playground equipment.  I watched one guy do about a million pull-ups on the monkey bars.  Lillian and Sylvia managed to get in and have a turn, too.  This was obviously a weekly place to meet up and to show off.

We also passed many pick up soccer games.  This is a much different world than where our apartment is in the 16th arrondissement.  Here, unlike our neighborhood, there are a variety of of people speaking lots of different languages and most of them are not wearing tight designer clothes.

Dizzy!

Sylvia rode the carousel as Pierre watched and Lillian read as I watched the bikers and walkers along the canal.  I didn't even notice that I got the guy with the baby strapped on his back in my photo--yikes!  I only saw one serious wipe out.  It is very busy and dangerous and no one seems at all fazed by it.  Our chairs were also works of art that spun. 

It got hot and we retired to Cité de la Science
Unfortunately, the kids part was closed for some annual clean up.  Luckily, it is a big place.

 There was a small Mediterranean aquarium in the second sub-basement that we hadn't seen before

 

 Fun with a cow.

These two are learning about vaccines. 

I wonder how the cow feels about standing on the site of a former slaughterhouse. 

Lucky, I guess.

La Rentrée--Back to School

Today is the girls' first day of school.   Here are some photos from the annual back to school photo shoot.   Sylvia will join Lillian around the corner at the elementary school.  Sylvia is in CP (grade 1) and Lillian is in CE2 (grade 3).  This year, they are going to stay for lunch a couple of days each week.  Today they came home for lunch and so far, so good.  Sylvia said her teacher was strict.  Lillian was not sure she was going to give her teacher the cookies we baked because it seemed "kind of babyish."  She was going to wait and see if anyone else gave the teacher something first. 

 

 

Scholarly sisters

Pierre has his helmet so that he can hop on one of Paris' commuter bikes and go off to work.  You can spot the North Americans because they are the only ones wearing helmets.

 

 

Our street is busy and so is our walk to school.  We are now slightly less likely to be hit by a car or run into people on the sidewalk than we were when we first arrived.

I thought that if we gave the teachers cookies that they might have a good first impression.  Sylvia has 25 kids in her class and I think Lillian has 32.  Lillian didn't know the name of her teacher at lunchtime.  When I tried to ask the woman guarding the door if I could find out what class my daughter was in, I was told firmly that I could wait until the end of the day. 

 The parents of the new (CP) students were allowed in the building.  It was complete chaos.  We did eventually find the list with Sylvia's name on it.  Lillian started a half hour earlier and we were not allowed to accompany her.  I am very proud of her because I can only imagine the chaos.

 

The first day of CP for Miss Argentina and Miss Canada

Bonne Rentrée tout le monde! 

 

Musée du Quai Branly

This weekend we went to Musée du Quai Branly.  It is a museum all about the different cultures in our great big world, something like Ottawa's Museum of Civilization...kind of.  The museum is free the first Sunday of every month and we can walk to it from our apartment.  The museum opened in 2006 and was designed by Jean Nouvel.  Here is a photo of the living wall on one of the outside walls of the museum.

  

 

We all got audio guides, and although they were not specifically for kids, the girls really enjoyed them.  They were basically little smart phones and the screens showed photos of the artifacts as well as maps and other details.  There were lots of amazing things to see.

 

 

And then we got hungry and stopped for some crepes before continuing home.

On the hour, every hour the cannons on the fountain near Palais de Chaillot spray for about 5 minutes.  It is a very welcome blast on a hot walk home!