Monday, December 31, 2007

Blogging The Louvre

Today I walked to the other side of the Seine, descended into the glass pyramid and bought my "Friends of the Louvre" membership. It's the first step towards what will become a weekly feature, starting next Monday, similar to Michael Plotz's "Blogging the Bible" series that Slate ran this past year. By "blogging" a room of the Louvre each week until I've covered them all, I'll attempt to convey a sense of the art, the artists, the stories and the histories represented. But more than that, I'll also be trying to deconstruct the very experience of visiting a museum, especially one as celebrated as the Louvre.

The project will be one of discovery for myself, as well. My art credentials are limited to an Art History 101 class I took at Stanford University with Albert Elsen in 1987, and a year spent working alongside a group of brilliant (and, yes, starving) artists at the MoMA bookstore in NY the following year. In addition to forming many of my attitudes towards art, that year at MoMA also enamored me of museums in general, and a certain type of museum experience in particular: the extended occupation of a space that is meant to be passed through.

That's something I'll try to capture in this series. By becoming a fixed and recurrent observer, I'll really be letting the room itself lead me to the story. Some weeks it'll be a painting, others a painter; sometimes I'll dive into the story on a canvas, other times it will be the story behind the canvas. Some weeks, though, the story might be a visitor I meet during my visit, or else a museum employee, or maybe even the collector who donated the work to the museum. I'll combine the experience of the visit with whatever research it inspires me to do afterwards, and as much as possible, I'll include images of the work I'm dealing with.

Depending on how it goes, I might spin this off into its own blog. For the time being, though, it will be here each Monday as a little time out from the discussion of global events. Hope you enjoy it.

Posted by Judah in:  Blogging The Louvre   

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