Did any other DU'ers catch the Monet in Normandy exhibit in Raleigh

[benEzra]

before it closed?

My wife and I slid in there at almost the last possible minute (12:00am to 2:00am on Jan 14th). It was a very moving experience, as we've always been Monet fans, but to see so many of his works in person, some of them never publicly exhibited before, was special.

And it was VERY cool to go to an art museum at midnight...

[nclib]

1. Yes.

I went with a school group so my experience wasn't quite the same as yours. I spent most of the time trying to keep 3 six year old boys behind the lines.

From what I did see, the paintings were not what I expected. They were more beautiful. Next time I might try to go on my own.

[benEzra]

2. LOL! I don't envy that task...

my 7 y.o. and 5 y.o. would have liked to go, but my wife and I wanted to make it a date, and it just wouldn't have been the same had we spent hours keeping energetic little hands off of priceless paintings...will wait until they're a little older and can appreciate it more.

[mnhtnbb]

3. Yes. Hubby and I saw it on election day in November.

We chose that date thinking it might be light on traffic. It was pouring down rain, and the exhibit was packed. Still, it was fabulous.
We had the chance to see Musee Marmotan in Paris--22 years ago--which has a marvelous collection of Monet's; we've been to his home at Giverny
in the spring when the tulips were in bloom; we've seen other Impressionist exhibits in major museums in the U.S., France, and Great Britain, but this exhibit really was spectacular.

What a treat for Raleigh to get it.

[Triana]

4. I did!

It was way crowded though! I wished I'd have picked a later time/date or something. But I did enjoy it. Part of what inspired me to go was this:

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

LINK: http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Monet_Refuses_the_Operation.html