Centre Pompidou aka: Musee National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou

The Hamster Cage..i love how this place looks…its so odd to me!

This might be the nicest modern art museum I’ve been to. If you go to the top and look out, you get an excellent view of Paris too.

by the huge “pipes” on the outside of the building. It was one of the strangest buildings I had seen back then – still looking good!

I got there when i was 15 with my group because we were goin to visit Museum d’Orsay but it was closed. I do think it was totally worth it….ART IS EVERYTHING! Loved it….the images….the paintings….the sculptures and the crazy videos….

...how this building grows on you! I hated it the first time I saw it, but by the time I left Paris I couldn’t get enough of it. The museum is free on the first Sunday of the month and, unlike the Louvre and Orsay, surprisingly uncrowded. Some of the art I loved and some of it I just did not get (6 months later I still can’t figure out what that Samuel Beckett exhibit was about). I didn’t actually find my guidebook or the museum programmes very helpful, as the collection is so big that they rotate it quite often. So if you have a favourite painting that you want to see, don’t actually count on it being there! The escalators up to the museum are on the outside of the building so you get a great view of Paris on your way up.

I also recommend the Stravinksky fountain outside the centre, there are some nice cafes along it and it’s fun to sit and watch people getting splashed. :)

be sure to take some time to hang out outside the pompidou, buy a crepe from one of th evendors and have a seat and take a listen to one of the street musicians taking their turn. also make sure to do some wandering in the back streets around the pompidou for some moderately prived and trendy boutiques! i found an awesome used book store not far from there.

Most museums are free to enter every first Sunday of the month, and as we happened to be there the first Sunday of October, we picked Pompidou – I’m not a big modern art lover, but it’s worth the visit for the architecture alone.

The fun modern side of art, some rather scary videos but amazingly inventive very very impressed, got a bit lost as i was alone but very good. Real Kandinsky’s, Picasso’s…etc what an experience!

Couldn’t really appreciate it as an 18-year old and would like to return to see it through better educated adult eyes.

my favorite are all the duchamps that they have. i didn’t realize they had “bicycle wheel” and i was seriously taken aback when i walked into the room and it was just there. i love all the dadaists and the collection is extensive. this might be my very favorite museam in all of paris!
i love the matisses as well.
if you want to give yourself a full day of looking at incredible art, the picasso museum is right down the street.

this picture is of the print “acrobate” by henri matisse.