P. T.: Part the Second

I spent my first day in Paris bumming around. I went to the tourist office where I found out that Fridays after 6 pm people under 26 years of age are FREE. Which was exciting for 2 reasons, 1) Because I can't spend much money and 2) I hadn't been able to meet anyone at the hostel and therefore had no one to go out with on Friday night. After the tourist office, I went to the Centre Pompidou, which I LOVE, they have fantastic exhibits there, I want to go back there again and again and again. I was there for 4 hours and had to leave at the apex of my visit there because i either had to eat or pass out. On the very top floor they have an exhibit of modern art made between 1900 and 1950, which I think is my favorite time period for art. There were some great exhibits on design as well. There was a suite of rooms dedicated to Philippe Starck as well as to inflatable furniture (and designs of inflatable living quarters, there was one actually on display. It was large and squishy and a violent banana color, it kind of looked like something from Barbarella). Then I bummed around the Tuilleries and then the Louvre. They have excavated the dungeons of the old palace that used to be there, which was pretty cool.
The Louvre has some pretty spectacular collections are archaeological artifacts, not only because they are well preserved etc, but because they have been curated and are explained well. At the British Museum the little explanatory panels are useless, they only say something along the lines of "bronze headdress with lapis beads. 1500 BCE. Donated by Sir Fancy-Pants McPorkington " which I find frustrating. English people amass impressive collections of treasure/archaeological artifacts in order to die and leave them to some museum. Where the curators carefully place them in glass cases and leave us to wonder at the implications of the object (who wore it? why? what does it say about that culture?). At the Louvre, everything was carefully explained and put in the context of the culture (for example: there was a room dedicated to agriculture in Egypt because they're economic and social systems were based on agriculture. There was even some discussion of peasants and slaves. Museums in England definitely have exhibitions with Ancient Egyptian artifacts, but they're all about gold and fancy sarcophogi with fance and jewels. Luxury goods that some dude collected because he had the cash to do so and then gifted the whole damn thing to some museum.)
oof, outta steam. more later.