Zara top (similar)
Zara jeans (similar)
Jonak babies (similar)
Chanel handbag
Linjer ring (c/o)
Location: Musee du Louvre – Paris, France
Paris, May 27, 2023
Dear friends,
The Louvre. This museum bowls me over every time.
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that we haven’t been here since 2013. It seems improbable, even to me, but I’ve counted the years back a dozen times now and each time, I’ve wound up in the same place. And the thing is, I know why. The museum is immense, sprawling, a maze of sculptures and paintings, teeming with people. You need not just a day, but days, years even, to be able to see it all. Sometimes, during a ten day trip, taking even one of the days that you know will pass so quickly for a visit feels like too much of a time commitment.
And beyond that – if anyone who isn’t on staff at the Louvre has seen it all in this museum, it might be us.
I don’t say that lightly. And I don’t mean to be glib. When we moved to Paris in 2012, I bought my Louvre Jeune card within a week of arrival. It cost me thirty-five euros, and it was the best money that I spent all year. With the card in hand, I could walk into the Louvre anytime it was open, at no cost. When it was rainy, I went to the Louvre. Cold and grey winter afternoon? We might as well spend it at the museum. Feeling bored and lacking inspiration? It’s nothing that wandering among sculptures for a few hours can’t fix. For a year, I went to the Louvre every week. Sometimes twice a week, and sometimes even more often.
I’m not sure that I can properly express what that was like at the time, because in many ways it was just a fact of life in Paris, like leaking pipes and constant line-ups at the post office. In retrospect, it feels surreal to think there was a time when I could, and did, just walk into the Louvre whenever I wanted; that this was a place that I went without thinking just how lucky I was. But the thing is, I think that I knew how lucky I was every single time. I never wanted that year of my life to end. When we packed our bags and ferried them, one-by-one, down the stairs, through the courtyard and back up the stairs onto rue Saint-Sebastien where a taxi was waiting to take us to the airport for the last time, I knew exactly what I was leaving behind.
So much has changed in the past decade. My love of museums, however, persists unabated. I love to discover new ones, but on this trip, I want, more than anything to come back to the Louvre and walk in the footsteps of my younger self. I booked our tickets weeks ago.
It’s not just that I want to return to see works of art that I know and love. There’s a particular new set of pieces, added to the collection in 2020, that I want to see in person: la rose du Louvre by Jean-Michel Othoniel. Released in 2020, to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the Louvre Pyramids, the nine roses, created using a printing technique called heliogravure, captured my imagination instantly. The timing was significant. We were nine months into lockdown when the Louvre acquired the nine roses. I’d been away from Paris for nineteen months. It was heartbreaking to be away from home, not knowing when we would be able to return – but for some reasons, the roses gave me hope that we’d make it back and that life would be as we remembered it.
We did come back, in late 2021, of course. But we were still wearing masks everywhere we went. There were additional vaccine doses still to come. So we didn’t visit the Louvre. It didn’t quite feel like it was time yet.
But now, here we are, in the Cour Puget, one of the two garden courtyards in the Richelieu wing of the museum. The roses are displayed here, among statues by the eponymous sculptor, Perseus and Andromeda most notable among them. The contrast between the modern and historic works is striking, but intentional, as if to show that no matter how the manner in which we express ourselves humans evolves with time, the concepts, the life experience we convey in our art remains largely unchanged. We exist, therefore we feel, and because we feel, we create. The era is immaterial.
It’s not 2013 anymore. I don’t have an apartment in Le Marais to return to, nor am I trying to manage to sustain myself on freelancing income, seeking inspiration wherever I can find it to keep going. But life, and this museum, are as I remember them; breathtaking and full of surprises, no matter how much I experience. I’m grateful for that.
