Louvre vs. Musee d’Orsay

I am going to make this argument very simple for everyone:  Musee d’Orsay is better.  There.  End of blog entry.

Honestly though, a lot of friends had told me to be sure to see the d’Orsay because it was, in fact, much better than the Louvre.  And I was very surprised that they were right.  But for argument’s sake, let me talk about the Louvre for a little bit.

It was my second trip to this museum.  When I was in Paris for a day and a half last year, I spent 4 hours of that time at the Louvre.  Not realizing how incredibly big it was, I just decided to start at one end and make my way to the other end.  After 3 hours of looking at rock artifacts from Asia, it dawned on me just how much time it was going to take to see it all, so I spent the next hour speeding through all the things that I would have liked to have spent time seeing.  So…this time out I was much more prepared.  Oddly enough, I was there 4 more hours, and never saw any of the things I saw last year.  I looked and looked for the antique furniture halls, and the courtyard with all of the Roman statues, and failed to find either.  But that’s ok…I saw them last year and 4 hours was about all I could take of the massive crowds.

What I did see was lots of great artwork (including, yes, the Mona Lisa).  This place is so big, that I constantly found myself looking out the window to see where I actually was in relation to outside.  In addition to the paintings (some of which I have included here), I was really interested to learn about the history of the building itself.  It was originally a castle meant to fortify the city against an attack, which explains its square shape.  I toured the original foundations and underground caverns that are deep below where the general public find themselves.  They even had jail cells intact from the original days…I would not want to find myself in one of those!  A personal highlight for me was helping two guys, in Russian, find the Venus de Milo statue.  Heck, I get lost at the Louvre, but I somehow managed to give directions in Russian.  Good times.

About a 15 minute walk across the river from the Louvre is the Musee d’Orsay.  The museum is actually an old train station, and the building itself is worth the price of admission.  It’s much, much smaller than the Louvre, but you certainly get the cream of the crop artistically.  And, it’s a lot (A LOT) less crowded.  On the ground floor they have a couple of dozen sculptures, and then the place sort of goes in a logical circle (a logical path at a museum?  What is this nonsense?!?!!).  There are many works of art spanning hundreds of years and genres.  The highlight for most people would probably be the Vincent Van Gogh exhibit.  Standing in a small touring group, admiring the paintings, I find I am not as impressed with him as I feel I ought to be, but his works were good.  A snotty teenage girl says to the group “why would his paintings even be here?  Isn’t there, like, a Van Gogh museum for this?”  I’m so glad her accent was British and not American.

Speaking of, they also had on display the original model used to make the Statue of Liberty.  Sometimes I think we Americans forget that it was a gift from the French, who based their revolution and democracy on the example of the US.  At the time the Statue was given, the US and France’s democracies were the exception to the rule, not what we know in the world today.

At the end of the day I find myself in the d’Orsay gift shop where I break down and buy a neat book about the museum.  I’m going to have so many books to look through and read when I get home, it will take me an entire year just to catch up!  But it was a great museum, and although I would recommend both to anyone who comes to Paris, if you had to choose for some reason, please choose the d’Orsay.  Just don’t disrespect Vincent freakin’ Van Gogh during a tour group.

Jeff

Aug 19^th, 2018