Louis Vuitton Museum - what all those handbags can buy

Yes, the infinite variety of the global microbiome finally caught up with me and I have a cold. It has slowed me down a bit both with sightseeing and with blogging, but I'll put this one up because it's fairly straightforward.

I had an ulterior motive in visiting the Pompidu Center show about Frank Gehry. The next day was the first opening for public viewing of the new Frank Gehry-designed Luis Vuitton Foundation Museum. I snagged a ticket for the first opening at noon and headed over. My route took me through the famous Bois de Boulogne, a forested park in central Paris (picture below). It's famous for being beautiful and also for its denizens of negotiable virtue, one of whom half-heartedly offered me some unspecified form of entertainment right there in the trees. Sadly, I was late for my tour and so proceeded doggedly on.

Well, it's a pretty spectacular place. I wandered around the interior for quite some time - here are some shots.

There are only a few art pieces in place as yet; here's one.

There were a lot of empty galleries as yet; luckily I had a can of spray paint along....

The exterior is also quite amazing but hard to capture. I have to admit when I took this picture I was reminded of the movie Dune;

Here are few more exterior shots without wiseguy commentary

I also took time to have a bite to eat in the restaurant

and visited an exhibition of models for the project - here are some of the early concepts

After lunch I played with one art piece that was up was an augmented reality tour of the museum. They gave you an Iphone and headphones and then you look through the Iphone as you wander through a narrated walk. I tried to take some pictures showing the reality and the corresponding augmented reality with somewhat limited success. In one, you encounter a percussionist playing the building and in the other a jazz combo is playing on one of the outside decks.

That's it for now. Time to blow my nose (again).