A Museum Trifecta aka Three Perfect Days for the Solo Traveler

(Feb 21-23, 2023) On the morning of the sixth day of our trip, my girlfriend and travel buddy Bobbi heads for home. I can only hope that her desire for an unforgettable Paris experience has been satiated -- if not, it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. What a marvelous whirlwind of activity this week has been! I now find myself all alone in the City of Light. I have three days on my own before heading south to Toulouse to visit Nathalie, one of my oldest friends from high school days.

My feelings are an odd mix of excitement, apprehension and anxiety. Even at home, spending an entire day alone has become such a rarity, when it does happen, I can feel awkward and oddly disjointed. Now, the thought of spending three days and nights (in a 700-year-old building) alone, despite being in one of the places I love best, leaves me trembling with equal parts anticipation and trepidation.

I have prepared for these days in advance, having asked myself what I would be sorry to have missed out on, and responded by buying tickets to three different museums, one of which Bob, had he been here, would have taken a pass on, since its main focus is fashion. For me, a visit to a museum is the ultimate learning experience, and therefore a true luxury to be savored. And, no surprise, some of the best museums in the world are right here in Paris.

The Palais Galliera, formerly known as the Fashion Museum of Paris, is housed in a stunning Italian Renaissance-style building constructed by Italian noblewoman and philanthropist Maria Brignole Sale De Ferrari, Duchess of Galliera, in the 1880s. Since 1977, the City of Paris has managed and operated the space as a museum devoted to fashion. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Galliera)

What a treat to have made it here in time to see the current exhibit “Frida Kahlo – Beyond Appearances”. While hugely popular for her bold and incomparable personal style, Mexican painter Kahlo has also garnered the respect of art critics, who place her among the most influential artists of the 20th century. (www.britannica.com/biography/Frida-Kahlo)

The exhibit, consisting of more than 200 items from Kahlo’s home Casa Azul, includes an impressive array of paintings, photographs and highly personal items, such as medicines, cosmetics, accessories and even back braces and prosthetic legs that Kahlo wore over the years, many of which she had decorated in her inimitable style. These items reflect the physical damage she had suffered from a near-fatal streetcar accident at the age of 18, the emotional aftermath of which would have a profound, lifelong influence on her art.

Another notable feature of the exhibit are the voluminous and colorful gowns mounted in display cases throughout the space -- many are from Kahlo’s own wardrobe, others are reproductions. The gowns are designed in the traditional Tehuana style symbolizing female power and independence, a product of the matriarchal society based in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the State of Oaxaca. Kahlo adopted the style as a young woman, not only as a tribute to the women of this indigenous community and a display of Mexican patriotism, but also to hide the fact that one of her legs had withered as a result of a bout with polio that she had endured at the age of six. (www.west86th.bgc.bard.edu/)

My experience at the Palais Galliera today has left me feeling exhilarated but a bit drained and dreamy all at once. I text Bob to let him know how well I’m doing as a solo traveler, and inform him that as much as he dislikes fashion museums, this exhibit would have been the exception to the rule – there was something in it for all of us!

The next morning, Day Two of the Museum Trifecta, I prepare for the cross-town jaunt to La Fondation Louis Vuitton. Designed by Architect Frank Gehry and completed in 2014, this utterly unique, football-shaped building made of undulating layers of steel, concrete and glass sits nestled in a peaceful wooded setting in the 2,155-acre Bois de Bologne, one of two large urban woods found just outside the city limits.

The Fondation was financed by the luxury brands conglomerate LVMH in cooperation with the city of Paris and represents an amalgam of modern design and state-of-the-art technology with an emphasis on environmental sustainability. (www.fondationlouisvuitton.fr/en/)

The exhibit I’ll be seeing today, “Monet – Mitchell,” is displayed in one of 11 galleries within the Fondation. Aside from the museum entry ticket, I have purchased a round-trip ticket for the shuttle bus, which picks up museum visitors at a bus stop just next to the Arc de Triomphe and shuttles them westward to the Bois de Bologne. After being dropped off just outside the museum building, I realize that this is by far the preferred method of transport here – even though the Paris Metro extends to the edge of the Bois, it’s still a 15-minute walk from the Metro stop to the museum.

“Monet – Mitchell” examines and compares the legendary 19th century Impressionist painter Claude Monet, to Joan Mitchell, a mid-20th century abstract expressionist. My initial reaction is one of mild skepticism as Mitchell’s paintings appear as just large blocks of bright color, seemingly haphazardly applied and with little cohesion. As I read more about her life and her relationship to her art, however, I find myself drawn to each painting – although they don’t necessarily provide the observer with an easily discernible, coherent tableau, they do very adeptly evoke feelings of loss, joy or despair, depending on Mitchell’s situation in life at the time they were created.

I can also see distinct similarities in the two artists’ styles, especially in the works from Monet’s later years in which he had taken on a more free-form, abstract style, remarkably similar to that of Mitchell. The informational placards make clear that, as the years had gone by, Monet’s vision had failed him, but his energy and desire to paint had not. So, for me, Monet’s later works evoke the sense that we are witnessing more of his true creative spirit, inspired from within, than of an artist whose keen eye could guide or control his brushstrokes. In that way, I feel one could say that Monet and Mitchell had a real spiritual connection. I walk away from the exhibit, just as I had the day before, feeling exhilarated by the experience and so fortunate to have had the opportunity to witness the work of two very remarkable artists.

Day Three of the Museum Trifecta brings me to the Cluny Museum in the distinguished Saint-Germain-des-Prés quartier in the 6th arrondissement. Also known as the Latin Quarter, a reference to the fact that students in the Middle Ages were taught in Latin at the neighboring Sorbonne Université, this quartier is chock full of those classic bistros where 20th century students, artists and philosophers gathered, such as Jean Cocteau, Max Jacob, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Ernest Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Those legendary bistros, such as Les Deux Magots, Brasserie Lipp and Café de Flore still exist today and draw large crowds of enthusiastic tourists willing to pay their legendary prices.

The Musée de Cluny, the National Museum of the Middle Ages, has recently undergone a years-long renovation, so I am eager to pay them a visit. The modern renovation blends well with the ancient 15th century hôtel originally built to house Benedictine abbots. Room after room unfolds displaying colorful murals, religious artifacts and sculpture, including original pieces from two icons of medieval architecture, the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Sainte-Chapelle.

A vaulted hallway leads to a very large, gymnasium-like room with high ceilings – this is the frigidarium, part of the Gallo-Roman Thermes de Cluny, thermal baths from the 1st century A.D. that were uncovered in the 19th century and incorporated into the museum. In Roman times, the baths covered more than 6,000 square meters of Lutetia, the Roman settlement that would become modern-day Paris.

Farther on, another hallway leads to a dimly lit room lined with six very large, elaborately designed, lush, red tapestries, collectively known as The Lady and The Unicorn. Believed to have been commissioned by the wealthy LeViste family in the late 15th century, these millefleurs (“thousand flowers”) tapestries represent the five senses, each depicting a beautiful young women accompanied by a menagerie of animals, oddly including a unicorn. The meaning of the sixth tapestry, titled “À Mon Seul Désir,” “To My Only Desire,” remains an enigma, but is believed by some to be a reference to free will. (www.musee-moyenage.fr/en/)

I now find myself nearing the end of day three of three amazing museum visits. In my excitement as a novice solo traveler in a city with so very much to see, I’ve packed my days chock-full and admittedly have pushed myself to exhaustion, both physically and mentally. But I also know that later, after I’ve returned home, I’ll look back and cherish these three perfect days spent with myself.