First Visit to the Louvre - A Museum Director's Reflection
Museum and exhibit reviews are among the things I want to include in this blog of my ideas related to cultural heritage, museums and public history. Perhaps it is fitting that the first museum to consider is the Louvre. I visited it Friday after walking the length of the Champs Elys ée from the Arche de Triomphe . It was a gorgeous day, cool enough to wear a jacket, warm enough to sit outside. Of course, I had to see the Louvre while in Paris! But, as I apply metacognition in the reflection on the visit, I am amused about how much what I noticed, wondered and pondered was uniquely informed by my particular background, experiences and niche knowledge banks. The year the Louvre opened, 1793, is also the year that Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette lost their heads to the French Revolution. It is the year I chose to focus the stories we told at the Louis (and Marie) Bolduc House when I served as the director of that site. How primitive a visiting Frenchman would have found the p...