This is what I was going to publish for Saturday, as you know now "definitely not" all good. But to take our minds off those incidents for a while, here is what I wrote.
Today was a long day and in keeping with the best Paris tradition a mixed affair, all good. Yesterday in my wanderings I noted that there was an Antiquaire show at Place Bastille. These are very high class affairs where the dealers are NOT afraid to ask big prices for really good items, so it can be quite educational. Since one pays for their education I ponied up the 10 euro entry fee and spent around 5 hours going through all the booths, I economized by bringing my own lunch. Of course I really perk up in the schlocky booths of which there are quite a few as well, but overall they sell nice things. I'm on the hunt for Cadart prints as I've mentioned before, but today I think they are a little too cheap for the dealers to get interested in and none turned up.
My big plan for the day was to go to what they termed a "conversation" on Thomas Cole who is one of the foremost landscape painters of the 19th century in the U.S. and is one of the founders of the Hudson River School of Painting. Interestingly four of the Hudson River painters figure in the history of Colorado art, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Thomas Worthington Whittredge, and John Fredrick Kensett who all painted in Colorado at one point or another, so that made it even more interesting. Cole figures prominently in a Louvre exhibition that will go into the New Year, but it's also a groundbreaking new direction for the Louvre. Evidently they have never before tried to present an exhibition that brings together art from around the world and that also encompasses such a long span of time.
The curator for the show was there and explained the exhibit, which I've not yet seen but I will, and soon. Along with her was a curator from the Yale museum of American Art who gave an American perspective. It is also groundbreaking in the sense that this the first time the Louvre has featured an American artist in a major exhibit who was painting prior to 1948. And they both expressed the opinion that American art prior to 1948 was poised to assume a bigger roll in the world history of art. They felt it has been overlooked and that is one of the mandates of the Terra Foundation of American Art, to raise the exposure. It really was a 400 level gathering because in addition to the curators, there was a trustee of the Louvre, the woman who wrote the Thomas Cole introduction for the exhibition, the executive director of the Terra foundation, and several others who were on first name basis with the aforementioned, and of course me. After their remarks they requested questions, so I jumped right in knowing that the silences can get very uncomfortable, I broke the ice.
Then things got rolling nicely, I talked with both curators afterward and they thanked me for my "incisive" observations. Every once in a while I dust off my thinking cap. So I had fun, but I'm sorry Deb missed it because she would have really liked it as well. We got to talk about Thomas Gibbons and Ferdinand Hayden, and Bierstadt, and Moran.
After the meeting I walked over to the Place de la Concorde and took some night pictures of Paris which I've been wanting to do for some time now.
Today was a long day and in keeping with the best Paris tradition a mixed affair, all good. Yesterday in my wanderings I noted that there was an Antiquaire show at Place Bastille. These are very high class affairs where the dealers are NOT afraid to ask big prices for really good items, so it can be quite educational. Since one pays for their education I ponied up the 10 euro entry fee and spent around 5 hours going through all the booths, I economized by bringing my own lunch. Of course I really perk up in the schlocky booths of which there are quite a few as well, but overall they sell nice things. I'm on the hunt for Cadart prints as I've mentioned before, but today I think they are a little too cheap for the dealers to get interested in and none turned up. 
My big plan for the day was to go to what they termed a "conversation" on Thomas Cole who is one of the foremost landscape painters of the 19th century in the U.S. and is one of the founders of the Hudson River School of Painting. Interestingly four of the Hudson River painters figure in the history of Colorado art, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, Thomas Worthington Whittredge, and John Fredrick Kensett who all painted in Colorado at one point or another, so that made it even more interesting. Cole figures prominently in a Louvre exhibition that will go into the New Year, but it's also a groundbreaking new direction for the Louvre. Evidently they have never before tried to present an exhibition that brings together art from around the world and that also encompasses such a long span of time. 
The curator for the show was there and explained the exhibit, which I've not yet seen but I will, and soon. Along with her was a curator from the Yale museum of American Art who gave an American perspective. It is also groundbreaking in the sense that this the first time the Louvre has featured an American artist in a major exhibit who was painting prior to 1948. And they both expressed the opinion that American art prior to 1948 was poised to assume a bigger roll in the world history of art. They felt it has been overlooked and that is one of the mandates of the Terra Foundation of American Art, to raise the exposure. It really was a 400 level gathering because in addition to the curators, there was a trustee of the Louvre, the woman who wrote the Thomas Cole introduction for the exhibition, the executive director of the Terra foundation, and several others who were on first name basis with the aforementioned, and of course me. After their remarks they requested questions, so I jumped right in knowing that the silences can get very uncomfortable, I broke the ice. 
Then things got rolling nicely, I talked with both curators afterward and they thanked me for my "incisive" observations. Every once in a while I dust off my thinking cap. So I had fun, but I'm sorry Deb missed it because she would have really liked it as well. We got to talk about Thomas Gibbons and Ferdinand Hayden, and Bierstadt, and Moran.
After the meeting I walked over to the Place de la Concorde and took some night pictures of Paris which I've been wanting to do for some time now.
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