Paris Off the Beaten Path: Try Small Museums
By Phil Chavanne

Small Paris museums offer you an alternative to the large venues when you wish to avoid the crowds there. See which museums to visit here.

Fans of Klimt, Schiele & Co., I recently wanted to take a leisurely look at the Grand Palais blockbuster exhibition on Vienne 1900. I picked a weekday mid-afternoon, assuming I could whizz in and loiter through. Oops! I lined up before the entry (in freezing weather) for over an hour. And when I got a glimpse of the over-populated jostling going on inside, threw in the towel.

If body-contact sport isn’t your ideal for expo-visiting in Paris (or elsewhere), try small museums.

Here’s a sampling of Parisian fares in this vein, where - despite the displays’ intrinsic interest, and English documentation generally available - you’re not likely to have your feet trampled or be elbowed in the ribs. Some are so tiny they aren’t mentioned in Bordas’ authoritative Guide des Musées de France.

Let’s begin by wandering down rue Antoine Bourdelle, 15e arrondissement (district) near the Gare Montparnasse. At no. 18 you can’t not notice, through a grillwork fence, a garden hosting a bronze horse almost two storeys high.

This is the Musée Bourdelle, former home and studio of the sculptor (1861-1929) for whom the street is named, and whose work - fittingly for a small museum? - was grandiose in intent and result. The style is somewhere between rough-hewn Rodin (with whom he collaborated for a while) and Art Déco’s wind-swept streamlining.

On view are samples of his inclination for antiquity and exoticism that range from statues of Sappho and Archer Heracles to a monumental portrayal of Polish national poet Mickiewicz and bas-reliefs of music, drama, etc. for the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, inaugurated in 1913. It was inaugurated with a scandalous premiere of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, danced by a rather lightly clad Nijinsky. That year Bourdelle exhibited work at New York’s landmark Armory Show.