Musée d'Orsay

The art Salon in Paris starting in the late 1600s was a place where some of the greatest and quickly growing in fame artists came together to display their works. They all spent time together both working and learning from each other. They shared techniques and critiques. They made each other better. I had the opportunity to see some of these artists works when I went to Musée d’Orsay.
In my opinion, I truly do not believe that I know enough about art, its history and its continuing affect in the present to truly appreciate it. In my travels I have visited many different museums filled with art of different styles, cultures and time periods in history. There have been

moments where I have looked at art and have felt a true appreciation and understanding for it, but more often than not when I look at art its almost as if I were to try to read and understand a new language. Like a new alphabet forming words on a page foreign to its reader, is a parallel to me and what I see in much art; an appreciation in its unique and beautiful form but a lack of understanding for its significance. That being said, even though I may not understand much art and its significance, I do enjoy seeing it and I have always been impressed that such incredible creations seen in the minds of many men and women can be made to be seen by the world in the form of drawings, paintings, sculptures and more. I experienced all of this while visiting Musée d’Orsay. The things that were going through my mind while walking through the museum were, “wow, its cool that one person can create that”, “oh, thats pretty”, and “dang, why is there so much nudity in all this art”. Obviously, I did not have many deep thoughts running through my head. However, there were a

couple of paintings I did like. There was one with elephants in front of a pretty orange sunset. Theres not much one would need to think about or try to understand to love a beautiful painting of elephants! There was also another beautiful painting that caught my eye by Monet called Chrysanthèmes (Chrysanthemums). The one painting that I took more time to stop and admire was the famous Van Gogh’s La Nuit étoilée or Starry Night (over the Rhône). Vincent Van Gogh is one of the few famous artists I am familiar with and Starry Night is in my opinion on of his more famous works. And no wonder so many people know about this painting; its absolutely breathtaking. It truly was incredible to see this piece in person.
Although, I had the opportunity to see beautiful art, what made the

time in Musée d’Orsay memorable was the people that I went with. Walking with them and trying to figure out all the art was anything but boring. We had a lot of laughs and I believe because of them I had so much fun. I have been truly blessed with the friendships that I’ve made here.