Tag Archives: Museum

Aug9

Musee du Cassis

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Wednesday, 10-July-2024



Driving to museums is cool and all, but you know what’s even cooler? Walking approximately 120m (just under 400ft) to an art museum! A combination Art / History museum!

Not art history, that is to say. But a museum that showcases both art and history. Cassis is a small town, okay? The town museum isn’t super extensive, just roll with it.


And… I’ll be frank, here, the museum is clearly underfunded. I’m not saying that I could do better, but… as far as town museums go, this one didn’t quite reach the benchmark of “this museum showcases at least the summary of the town’s wikipedia page”.

It was neat, though, don’t get me wrong! Just… left me wanting, in terms of actual content.



What was there, then? Well – It was two stories; the first one being some interesting artifacts that had been recovered from the Mediterranean surrounding Cassis, and the second being paintings by Jacques Troupel. The artifacts were mainly Amphorae, the types of large stoneware jugs that were used in Greek and Roman times. The paintings were mainly “fire paintings”, where Jacques would paint with flammable material, and then light it to produce the interesting flame-scoring patterns.

It was neat, definitely… but I’ll still add a quick link to Wikipedia for those of my readers interested in the more detailed history of the town.


Link = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassis

Aug8

The Musee Granet

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Tuesday, 09-July-2024


The two main attractions of Aix en Provence were the Méjanes library, and the Musee Granet.

The library was just a “walk up and check it out” situation, so we visited it first, after finding suitable parking… but the Musee, well, we had a feeling it may be a bit more of an adventure. We found some food, steeled ourselves, and charged inward to glorious art!



There was a lot of art.

Three floors of art, if I recall correctly, complete with a cool sub-basement that held (as is tradition) my favorite pieces in the museum. Not the most famous, or the weirdest, but definitely my favorites.

It was lovely; the main gallery was primarily religious, which isn’t quite my jam, but it was definitely interesting walking through and reading about all the details – Everything was purely in French, so I’ll include my translation-photos along for clarification. Of interesting note – one of the paintings, from 1661, is actually the first French portrait of a hunter! Kind of neat, showing how the vocation evolved over time.

Ohh also there was a sculpture of a guy without skin, from a doctor’s office in 1853. So… that’s a thing I’ve seen, now.



We perused, walked, explored, and enjoyed. We were able to make our way pretty much completely through the museum before getting saturated, too, which was a nice change of pace for me… by the time we were getting hungry, we’d finished up and were ready to head back to Cassis for some lovely dinner by the lapping waves.

Jul5

Fotografiska Tallinn – the Tallinn photography museum

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Saturday, 08-June-2024


One of the spots that had been high up on the recommendations given to me by Steven and Linna (the folks I met on the ferry from Helsinki) was the Photography museum in Tallinn. I hadn’t heard of it on my own, but supposedly it’s quite well regarded in terms of photography museums… and I do have a lovely tradition of visiting lots of art museums, so this dovetailed well into my standing adventure plans.

I’m also trying to break into the photography world, so… double-win, right there, right?


I’d marked it on my to-do list, had a day open, and made my way to visit. It was a beautiful walk, from the old town area I was staying, and my wanderings found me exploring the neighborhood around the museum nearly as extensively as I explored the museum itself (Ed Note: See the previous post about the Teliskivi neighborhood, intrepid reader!)… which isn’t a bad thing in any sense, in my opinion!

Once I made my way into the museum, though, I found a whole different world than I think I’ve ever seen before.

You see… I can’t recall having been to a dedicated photography museum before. Sure, I’ve seen photography exhibitions in art museums, but never a museum dedicated to the pure art of photgraphy… and especially now, since I’ve been focusing on my own photography for so long.

Anyways. It was really cool to see, and I really enjoyed the museum! There were some selections that I didn’t really quite get what made them worth including, but… I’ll ascribe that to personal preference, and the fact that I just really like representational art vs. more esoteric self-referential stuff.

100% recommend, would go to again.