Art / Tourism
European Vacation, Art Appreciation, and Crowd Control
My family and I are just back from a whirlwind of holiday where we visited London, Paris, Athens, and Rome in just over two weeks. What an amazing trip! We saw and experienced so much, and I wanted to take a moment to share some of it with you, particularly some thoughts about art and crowds.
Let’s begin with the Mona Lisa. There is always a crowd in front of the world’s most famous painting, everyone trying to get their own snapshot of the masterpiece. We walked past her room, noting the massive line, deciding that we didn’t actually care about getting any closer.
We continued looking at other priceless art hanging on the walls of the Louvre, including a different da Vinci of a different woman. It is fascinating to me how most everyone simply walked by “Portrait of a Lady From the Court of Milan”, barely noticing it.
I imagine most people who visit the world’s largest museum are tourists like me, not art connoisseurs. They are there to say they have been to the Louvre and to say they have seen the Mona Lisa.
As you walk through the galleries, the paintings just pass by, one masterpiece after another, all blending and blurring together. It is impossible to appreciate each one, they just become, for the most part, scenery on the trip through the museum. We did manage to sit down a few times in some of the less crowded rooms and we looked a little longer at particular works, not caring much about who the artist was, but simply noticed and wondered.
The Louvre is overwhelming. There is too much to see in its over fourteen kilometers of hallways. This is true of many of the world’s major museums. We had visited the British Museum after a long day of walking to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, then Westminster Abbey. The British Museum is nowhere close to the size of the Louvre, but still, there is a lot there. We took an hour or so and saw a bunch of the ancient Greek sculptures and also the Rosetta Stone. Check. Tourism level up!
We took a Seine River Cruise which was wonderful, basically following the path of the 2024 Olympic Athletes, seeing the gorgeous Parisian architecture. This was a great way to slow down and appreciate the artistry on display in the buildings and bridges of one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Our tour guide mentioned that the favourite museum of Parisians is the Orsay Museum. I already suspected this and we had already planned to go. It is an amazing place. We didn’t spend long there, but this is where you will find one of the most extensive collections of impressionist art in the world. You know, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet. These are my favourite. I joked that if we had just one of the paintings that was housed in this part of the museum in Winnipeg on loan it would be a huge deal, but here we were just, you know, of walking by ten Monets here, eight van Goghs there, no biggie.
The crowds weren’t as big here, but it still overwhelms. You could stop and look at one painting for a few minutes, but you can’t really stop at all of them. I almost felt bad just casually walking past one priceless masterwork after another, barely paying attention. But, at the same time my feet were pretty sore from a visit to Versailles earlier in the day, so, you kind of just turn your back on the art and stay in tourist mode. You see Starry Night (check) and then, head to the exit.
Being in these world renowned art galleries reminded me a bit of being on a safari. You go to the area you are expecting to find Elephants, and along the way you see some monkeys. So cool! You stop, take some pictures, but eventually, you get to the Elephants and wow! On the way to the impressionist area, you see some cool stuff, but when you get there and see the Monets and the Van Goghs they really are stunning! And then after a while, the jeep starts to move, and you leave the Elephants behind. You see some more monkeys and you’re sort of in disbelief that the monkeys are now kind of no big deal. You’re tired of all the touring and you hed back to your tent.
Much of tourism in these major centres now is about crowd control. You can get timed entry tickets for many places which enable you to skip the longer standby lines. We did this for Westminster Abbey, Versailles, Notre Dame, The Louvre, the Colosseum, and even the Harry Potter Studios Tour. Overall, we found there was a point where an experience could eventually get ruined by the crowds being too big. This was definitely true in Versailles.
Cheryl and I had loved our visit to Versailles twenty years ago, wandering through the state rooms, the hall of mirrors, and then the beautiful grounds and gardens. This time, we were crammed in with way too many other people, making the cavernous halls of the Palace feel smaller than our bi-level back home.
This was partially true as well when we saw the Trevi fountain in Rome. My experience of this was perhaps better because at 6’4 I was able to simply look over the crowd and see what was honestly an enormous and mind-blowingly beautiful sculpted work of art. What are with the fountains in Rome? I mean, they are all amazing. But, the Trevi fountain? It actually lives up to the hype. The only problem - crowds.
Having space and time to rest and appreciate what we were doing became much more important to us. It was telling that my daughter commented on how her favourite transportation on the trip was when we took the train to Stoke-on-Trent to visit family. It was spacious, lots of leg room, seats comfortable, and it was about 90 minutes of quiet. Far better than planes, metros, busses, etc. Well, except for maybe the double-decker bus we took for fun where we got the front seat at the top as we whipped around Trafalgar Square.
In London, we went to a bunch of Theatre: Wicked, Much Ado About Nothing, Hadestown, Six. We ended up in a private box to watch Six. My favourite thing about this was that we could move our chairs to maximize legroom. Again, space is very important for enjoyment and appreciation. On our final night in London, my wife and daughter went to see a new musical of The Devil Wears Prada starring Vanessa Williams, and I went to Wembley Stadium to watch the England National Football team play a World Cup qualifying match.
Theatre and sporting events are far different than being a tourist in a museum trying to hit the highlights. Everyone at an event are focussed on the art being performed in front of them for those few hours, and yes, I am including what happened on the pitch at Wembley in the category of art. You cannot convince me that Reece James’ goal from a free kick from 25 yards out was not a work of art. At these events, we slow down, we pay attention, we give our focus. We cease being tourists and we become participants in some way.
A word about Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. This started out as something closer to art tourism. It was originally like going on safari to see the big elephant, or lining up to see the Mona Lisa just to say you’ve seen the Mona Lisa. We’re Shakespeare fans, but we didn’t go for Shakespeare. We got tickets to this play because Tom Hiddelston and Hayley Atwell were the leads. If you don’t know who they are, they have both been in Marvel movies and TV series as Loki and Peggy Carter respectively. We went to have a celebrity sighting.
But, because we sat, slowed down, and experienced the play, we actually got to see more than celebrity. We got to see art. I knew Tom Hiddleston had trained as a Shakespearean Actor before being in Marvel movies so I was expecting him to be good, but honestly, I have never seen acting on stage at this level before, and I’ve seen my fair share of plays. He’s at the top of his craft, and so is Hayley Atwell. All the actors in this show were fantastic, but these two were phenomenal. Witnessing art at this level is something to behold!
Other times where having a bit more time and space (less crowds) made a real difference…
We visited the Montmartre Museum. It is a small museum that we only went to because it featured in an episode of a TV show my daughter watches. It was great, and was at one time the home of Pierre-Auguste Renoir - they have a few of his works, which was very cool. One of the beautiful things about this museum is the lovely little garden and the view of a vineyard next door to it, right there in the middle of Paris!
We toured the Acropolis in Athens. Incredible! We could have taken a tour that continued from the Acropolis to the Museum of the Acropolis. We opted out of that which meant we could simply stay at the top and then walk down when we wished. This led to us walking along a set of streets and finding a lovely restaurant for lunch. I could write an entire post on all the food we ate on this trip!
I took a tour of the Vatican Museums (second largest museum in the world). Again, the artwork was phenomenal. The Raphael rooms, the map room, the tapestry room, and room after room of other sculpture, art, and mosaic floors were all breathtaking. Most of these were pretty crowded. But there is also a contemporary art section, just a few dimly lit hallways where the crowd thins as people choose a more direct route to the Sistine Chapel (also incredible, of course). Hidden away, almost like an afterthought, were pieces by Dali, Matisse, and Chagall. I couldn’t believe these were here and I took just a few moments to stand in awe.
Of course, this reflection you are reading is more than a travelogue. We can ask in our everyday life where we feel crowded out, where clutter is getting in the way of appreciating beauty. It might not be actual crowds… it could be an overly-booked calendar, an overfull to do list, an inbox, things we regret saying yes to, responsibilities that that aren’t ours to bear alone, the never ending news cycle that we can’t seem to stop consuming, the social media feed that we keep scrolling, or it might be just plain stuff, actual clutter in our homes or sheds.
We can ask in our everyday life where it might be possible to take a few moments and slow down to be surprised by creative work in front of us, whether it is at our local library, or school play, or a grandchild displaying their latest lego creation. We can look to places away from where the crowd is most dense to see if there might be a hidden gem nearby.
Being a tourist while on holiday is one thing, but we certainly don’t want to be tourists in our own lives, watching moments pass by and snapping photos as if that somehow legitimates our witness. We don’t just want to be in attendance for our lives, we want to properly attend to our lives, especially the parts that truly light us up, that connect to our creative selves.
Perhaps slowing down, taking time, and skipping the crowded sections of our lives might help us notice something or discover something better.
And - what a trip!
Wow Matt. Enjoyed this vacation story along with you. Thanks for the creative thoughts.