Au musée! But leave that camera at home. (Paris, part 3a)

When I was a student in Paris, I was required to spend hours in its largest museums staring at art. It wasn't a bad assignment, but I tried to avoid the more obvious destinations this time around, with one exception. The Museé d'Orsay became my favorite museum and favorite building in 1991 and again in 1993 and I had to go back and see if anything had changed.

It was not quite the museum I remembered. Now, instead of breezing through with my student pass, I took my place in the queue outside, winding my way through the stanchion ropes, not for a special exhibit, but just to have my bag checked, and then joined another line to get an entry ticket. I'd read about two years of renovations that rearranged many of the side galleries, but the first thing I noticed was the sign: "photos interdites."

Photographing the art in the Museé d'Orsay was always a highlight of my visits, and the layout of the former train station itself was photo-worthy, too. I'm so glad I still have all my prints from back then. In high school, it was also convenient to use my telephoto lens to spy on the boys on the first floor. Now, so much as taking a smart phone out of your bag earned you an instant reprimand from the sour-faced security staff. I was not deterred. Not when there were new rooms to explore.

I definitely don't recall seeing this ballroom before.

Or being able to stand by the clocks.

I found a lonely buzzard under the stairs. I doubt anyone's ever bothered to try and take his picture.

I had to abandon any plans to rephotograph my favorite paintings or the marble statues in the main nave. They had once seemed like old friends, I had spent so much time looking at them, but now I could only pass by and say, "Hello, I remember you." So glad, again, to have my old film prints. I resigned myself to picking up postcards of any new works that I'd liked, but I was not leaving without one interior shot of the best re-used train station I know.

About two seconds later I heard, "Madame, les photos sont..." Yeah, yeah, I got it. I headed for the gift shop. It's a shame that current visitors can only take home their favorite work on postcards, since the postcard will rarely reflect the art that they saw on that day, in that light. And kind of amusing that the no photo policy exists, in part, supposedly, to prevent wobbly smart phone users from catapulting into paintings. Hopefully there will be enough Sunday protests by the folks at Orsay Commons (they come armed with cameras) to overturn this absurd rule in the future and then the Museé d'Orsay will go back to being the welcoming, beautiful place that I remember.