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OTHER PARIS MUSEUMS PART 1 of 2

© Annette R. Bignami

The French, like the British, plundered much of the world during their Empire days. Stack this loot on top of the work of the world's most productive artists, and those who try to cover the Musées du Louvre and d'Orsay in the same day deserve their eyestrain and that artistically replete feeling, as art becomes wallpaper after the first 25 paintings. A week or two in Paris offers alternatives. Multi-day museum passes let you dodge in early and late, check a few galleries, and café for a bit.

Long-term passes open up second tier museums such as the modern art in the Pompidou, and the Picasso and Rodin Museums that cynics feel also show the working of French taxation. However, the most memorable museums may not be well known, and all sorts of special interest museums hide treasures. So fit your visits to your specific interests. Here's one very personal interest list:

Brancusi's Studio (Sculpture)

For fans of Bird in Space and other Constantin Brancusi sculptures, the 10 franc admission to his reconstructed studio in the courtyard of the Pompidou Center is the best deal in France. Four display areas full of Brancusi's tools are filled with plasters and completed works in marble, stone and metal. Wide ledges let you sit and imagine tools in hand and works in progress.

Those who insist can head over to the Pompidou's Modern Art collection with works of the 20th Century where exhibits change faster than a Montmartre stripper, vary wildly in quality, but are rarely boring, and the nearby fountain in Place Igor Stravinsky is a kid's delight.

TIP: Time visits so you can be in front of the Le Defenseur du Temps mechanical marvel of a dragon clock on the alley that runs north from the Brancusi Studio from ten to twelve for "more bongs for the buck." Then on a nice day graze on Rue Rambuteau food shops east towards the Musée Picasso, or west to the Forum des Halles' hundreds of shops.

Nearest Metro: Rambuteau Hours vary but it's open late Wednesday through Friday

Institut de Monde Arabe (Islamic Art)

Arabs were inventing algebra when some Europeans still painted each other blue and dancing around oak trees, so it's nice that the Institut reminds visitors that terrorists are but a pimple on the massive body of Islamic culture. The building, with it's light screens to control the light, is as artful as the wonderful carpets and, in particular, Arab astrolabes, the navigation devices borrowed by the Europeans before sextants. Since Islamic artists work with patterns rather than figures, this is a good break after a portrait gallery.

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