World Refugee Day (June 20)

World Refugee Day this year is Saturday, June 20, 2020. I am pre-writing this post, inspired by a 2019 story on artnews.

The Met Is Covering Up a Painting by Marc Chagall to Show What the World Would Lose Without the Contributions of Refugees

"Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art this week will be unable to see one of the major works in the museum’s collection: Marc Chagall’s The Lovers (1913–14). The painting, although still on view, has been obscured with a drab gray curtain in honor of World Refugee Day (Thursday, June 20). The museum is hiding the painting to emphasize what the world stands to lose if countries turn away refugees such as Chagall, a Russian Jew forced to flee France with his fiancee, Bella Rosenfeld, after the Nazi invasion. The Lovers depicts the artist and his wife, who resettled in New York..." [continue reading on artnet].

Marc Chagall's The Lovers (uncovered)

Opera Garnier learnings

I have been a fan of the Opera Garnier since I stumbled upon it early into my month in Paris in 2009. I was already blown away by the building when I looked up and first set eyes on Chagall's remarkable ceiling. I gushed at the time, and have since acquired a tremendous print of the ceiling (yet to be framed) and a book or two.

Yet, despite learning that construction began in the 1860's, I never really thought about how that Chagall got there.

Then, this morning, reading an old copy of a Sunday NY Times left over from a vacation (I buy a copy and read it front to back over a week, and unfinished sections set aside... one of which just surfaced), I had a major ah ha moment:

"Among the theater's most famous fixtures are the chandelier and the painted ceiling that surrounds it ~ originally by Jules Eugène Lenepveu, then replaced in 1964 with a new sprawling work by Marc Chagall depicting scenes from operas by Mozart, Wagner and more."
Behind the Curtain at the Paris Opera, New York Times, September 8, 2019

Of course!!!!