I Louvre it!

Many students take advantage of the endless study abroad opportunities that UGA has to offer.  In fact, the Open Doors 2011 list released annually by the national Institute of International Education ranks UGA in the top 15 for the number of students studying abroad.

Just last summer I was packing my big red suitcase and stepping off the plane in Paris. I not only expanded my field of cultural reference, but also learned about international affairs, and had the chance to see famous works of art and landmarks that I would not have seen otherwise. 

Spanning eight thematic departments and 35,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the early modern period, the Louvre can be overwhelming to visit! I was in dazed by its size of the Louvre, and the map didn’t do much help with a museum that big. I wished I had done more research of the paintings inside, so I ordered a vanilla skinny latte from Starbucks and sat down to figure out where to go first. I couldn’t make much sense of the map, but the energy of the caffeine was kicking in, so I was ready to roll! I was itching to see every painting, every sculpture, every Egyptian work… basically every detail of the museum. Here are a few helpful hints I wished I had known when trying to conquer the Louvre.

I took this picture from a window inside the Louvre

•  First, it’s free the first Sunday of every month for students. That being said, get there early and expect a crowd.
• There is a third entrance through the Louvre mall (on rue de Rivoli), beneath the museum. Lines here tend to be shorter than the others but can occasionally be long as well. 
• If there is a crowd of people around a work of art, you can bet it’s one you should look at too. Even if you aren’t familiar with the work, it’s probably famous. Test it out- write down the name of the work and the artist and Google it later. I did that a few times and was so glad that I took the time to appreciate it even though I had no idea what I was looking at.

Kat’s top 10 works to see in the Louvre:

1. The Nike of Samothrace, known as “Winged Victory”
2. Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo
3. “Liberty Leading the People” Eugène Delacroix
4. “Oath of Horatii,” Jacques-Louis David
5. “The Death of Marat,” Jacques-Louis David
6. “The Raft of the Medusa,” Théodore Géricault
7. “Mona Lisa,” Leonardo da Vinci
8. “La Grande Odalisque,” Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
9. “The Wedding Feast at Cana,” Paolo Veronese
10.  The Code of Hammurabi

"La Grande Odalisque" Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres succeeded in his desire to capture purity, and the essence of her beauty is indescribable up close!

"The Death of Marat" Jacques-Louis David

Workers continue to strike at French museums

AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere

The Louvre Museum and the palace at Versailles were closed yesterday due to a workers’ strike that began in November at the Pompidou Center for modern art; other workers joined this week.

 

Yesterday, workers blocked the tourists outside the pyramid of the Louvre courtyard. Versailles usually has thousands of visitors each day but didn’t have enough workers to open. The Pompidou Center and the Musee d’Orsay were closed as well. Workers at Francois Mitterrand National Library in Paris voted to join in today.

 

Union leaders met with Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand earlier this week and did not win concessions. The culture minister said that “France could not make an exception for museum workers in a government-wide cost-cutting measure affecting all public servants, and that museums had many ways to reorganize to deal with shrinking staff members.” Labor leaders then decided to continue the strike today. 

Check out our earlier blog post by clicking here.

McDonald's in the Louvre

On the other side of the world, in Paris, France, some people are outraged by the new McDonald’s opening at the Louvre. Apparently, the staff and some other disgruntled fast-food haters wrote a petition letter to the administration begging them not to open a Starbucks a year ago. The petition was rejected and the administration decided to open the Starbucks anyway. It seems as if people are reacting just as strongly, if not more strongly than they did for the Starbucks opening, and the museum still refuses to budge on the issue. There will be le McDonald's in le Louvre, whether you like it or not!

The best part in this article are the user comments. You really get a good sense of the public’s split opinion regarding this issue. Some are accepting the recent move, approaching it with a more defeatist attitude, reminding us that there is already dismal food at the Carousel dining hall in the museum. Others are outraged by what they think is the States’ impending cultural domination, a blatant attack on French cultural sensitivities.

Similar things are happening to museums and cultural heritage sites all over the world. China had the same issues with Starbucks placing a shop in the Forbidden City.