Musée Zadkine

This museum was an eight-minute walk from my apartment. I often passed it on my way back from Luxembourg Garden. It is open every day but on Mondays, and it has free admission, so I ended up going three or four times.

It is set back from the buildings that face the road, so to enter, you need to walk between two large apartment buildings into a kind of courtyard. One day I walked into this inner courtyard, and I felt my heart jump. It was because the little house is surrounded by a garden. I noticed on another visit that the bushes aren’t even doing well, I think they suffered during the very hot summer. But a garden is a garden even if it’s barely alive, and it has an energy that appeals to me.

Passing through the first part of the garden (the dead part) you then enter the house. The first room is the welcome room and gift shop. It is simple and sparse. There were always two or three people there waiting to greet you, and one always spoke English.

The shop is actually very sweet. There were postcards and journals decorated with the work of the two artists that lived and worked at the house. For children, they had modeling clay. Seeing it reminded me how much Rae enjoyed working with colored modeling clay. She made many miniature figures, probably more than fifty, and she would play with them and tell herself stories. The figures were quite elaborate with hair, hats, skirts, pants, beards, whatever was needed. I keep many of her dolls on a melamine tray. They are protected with saranwrap. I just can’t part with them.

After the foyer, you walk into a room that houses the description of the museum and some works of both artists. Zadkine was a famous sculptor during the early 20th century.

 More soon…..