PARIS MUSEUMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1938, Page 18

PARIS MUSEUMS.

BUILDING RECONSTRUCTION. PARIS. The destruction of the ponderous central mass of the Trocadero and the reconstruction of the two wings to form what is now called tho Palais de Chaillot has not only opened up one of the most spendid views over Paris to the passer-by, but has been made the occasion for the reorganisation of the two museums which were housed in the old building One of them the anthropoligical Musee dc I'Homme. The other, which used to be called the Musee de Sculpture Comparee, has now been reopened under the title of Musee des Monuments Francais.

The rearrangement is not yet complete, for the public is at present only admitted to the ground floor rooms; but what is already available presents the whole history of medieval sculpture and is particularly rich in the eculpture of the romenesque period. The museum, a.si« well known, consists entirely of plaster casts of original statues which are distributed over the whole of France and copies of medieval frescoes and paintings; and as it is a musuem for students cach exhibit is accompanied by an authoritative and full description, which add enormously to the interest of the collection.

Thero are also architectural photographs of those buildings which form the background of the originals, and maps, which explain the prevalence of certain types of architecture in certain districts, and show how the whole thing is linked up with the routes along which the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages were wont to pass.

Perhaps anyone who happens to remember what was the museum which was first called Mil see des Monuments Francais will be disappointed to find that the present one consists only of reproductions. For it was thia name which th' painter and archaeologist, Lenoir, gave to the collection of masterpieces which he managed to save from the ruins of churches, monasteries, and castlasat the time of the Revolution, housed them in what is now the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but was then a dismantled convent, and eventually handed them over to the Louvre. But the interest of theee reproductions is such that the disappointment will not be great.