I Do Miss Our Museums...
I had been recently been thinking of our wonderful museums and how much I miss them. Then one day, we were driving to the Lexus dealer to have our windshield repaired when I spied something marvelous all along the Champs Elysée, from the Concorde to Rond Pont on the North side of the Avenue; There were twenty humorous bronze monumental sculptures representing a cat and mouse in various comical poses displayed with equally side-splitting captions in French and English. Each one was different from the other. We couldn’t read the signs that gave the background of the exhibit and the identity of the artist, but we decided that the following day we would walk from home through the Elysée Park to the Avenue and visit the exhibition, the only one open for viewing.
The day was quite cold and breezy with brilliant blue skies and occasional while clouds lending drama to the scene.
There were few pedestrians to contend with, so our anxiety level was low. I do love the walk from our home down the broad Rue Royal, into the Place de Concorde, past the guards porting machine guns and smiling when they say 'Bonjour' as we passed the corner of the Embassy of the United States and cross the street through the park to the exit on the grand Avenue. Ted always cringes when I call it “our hood”.
Philippe Galuck, formerly an actor, a painter and sculptor, as well as a radio and TV commentator, had a running series of cartoon called “The Cat Talks”, 23 albums of cartoons and 15 books have now been transformed into “Le Cat Walks” on the most prestigious space in the French capitol. It is the first of twelve such exhibits in to visit cities through 2024. We walked the line-up chuckling all the way, talking photos to remind us of this day and these hilarious images when and if memory fails us and walking the 5 km. round trip will be something from the past. My favorite sculpture was the one titled “Revenge: Le Juste Retour Des Choses” or “Payback Time; Just this once, a car gets run over by a cat.”
At the end of the line, we turned to our left to admire the Grand Palais and then crossed it ok i diagonally through the park, past our beloved live theatres, asleep for who knows how long, then back home for a warm bowl of mushroom soup. Yum!
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