a day of museums

I had read an article about the Albert-Kahn Museum in a magazine (AFAR- I think) and had kept it as a reminder to check out the place-

the key thing to know is - he is famous for something known as the Archives of the Planet- (from wikipedia)

The Archives of the Planet was a photographic endeavour to document buildings and cultures.  In 1909, Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to Japan on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director, and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first colour photography, autochrome plates, and early cinematography. Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. These form a unique historical record of 50 countries, known as The Archives of the Planet.  Kahn's photographers began documenting France in 1914, just days before the outbreak of World War I, and by liaising with the military managed to record both the devastation of war, and the struggle to continue everyday life and agricultural work.

here are a few of the photos which were reproduced in the magazine article-

I was so excited to visit this amazing collection-

 

I checked the website the night before to make sure I knew exactly how to get there and the opening times - so we headed out on the metro to the end of the line 10 by the Bois de Boulogne.  and here is what we found-

seriously - no notice whatsoever on their website- and they didn't even tell us when we bought the tickets! scumbags! they waited until we had paid and then informed us the photographs could not be seen AT ALL- however you could buy things in the gift shop! - so extremely disappointed we decided to walk through the garden and then have lunch nearby- sushi!

so the good news was that we made such quick work of the garden that we got to the sushi place before a mad lunch rush hit them and we had a very nice lunch out in the "burbs" of yesteryear - now just a part of metro Paris-

then we headed to the d'Orsay where we bought out two day pass at a kiosk by the metro stop rather than wait for an hour in the ticket line---

we toured through the d'Orsay and saw  an exhibit from an American collector that I loved but Phil was only tepid about-

then back to the hotel and then later to our fabulous dinner at Au Bon Accueil-

tomorrow is our last full day in Paris on this trip and we plan to do museums- and then have dinner with our friend Anna and her partner Aurelian.... but no more photos so I will wrap up with a brief recap of that day I went to the Orangerie for the exhibit of Italian Impressionists and Phil went to the Louvre to visit as many galleries as his feet would hold out for---

we met back at the hotel and then went to dinner with Anna - a wonderful evening and the following morning we were off to the airport for the horrors of security and waiting around-

we got home on Sunday afternoon and zipped right back into the work routines - because that was eight days ago and in a week we are headed south again for a new adventure!