We have a friend visiting for a few days. We decided to go to Albi for the day. It is about a 45 minute drive from Toulouse. Many of you know the big attraction in Albi, the Henry Toulouse Lautrec Museum. We had seen a retrospctive of his work in San Francisco when we lived in the Bay Area. We were excited to finally visit the museum, a dream of Jean-Jacques’ for many years.
The museum is set in a beautiful building next to the cathedral in Albi. I was expecting a small quaint affair based on what I read. The museum was quite grand, covered a couple of levels, had paintings, drawings, posters, planning sketches, and much more.
One of the most interesting things was that some parts of the museum had not been restored yet so it had creaky floors, stained ceilings, wallpaper, and other non-museum like qualities. It was not a distraction. It was rather comforting. Sometimes you go to museums and everything is so perfect, a rather stark contrast to visiting artist studios where the works were probably created.
Here is a link to the museum. Don’t you think they need a better website, how about one that has been updated less than 2 years ago. If I had the guts I’d contact them directly to make a proposal. I really could do a better job.
Here is a link to the cathedral
Here are some You Tube videos about Albi, yes I forgot my camera again.
Popularity: 6% [?]
We didn’t make the trip to Albi, but hopefully, we’ll do it one of these days.
I wish you would publish some pics of your apartment, it seems really great in your description.
I don’t understand, do you live in Toulouse now? From you blog it sounded like you don’t live here anymore. Well if so you know that it has been foggy so I haven’t had good enough light for pictures. We are in a livable state but not really a picture perfect state. Pictures soon.
Albi was great. The life of Toulouse Lautrec was very sad though. I didn’t realize how sad.
So when did you guys live in the Bay Area? Did we overlap? We were there between 1986 and 2003. Were you in the city?
Albi was a place we visited many years ago. Very cool town, and the cathedral was spectacular.
I lived in Berkeley and Oakland from 1990 to 2002, Jean-Jacques lived in SF, then Berkeley, and then Oakland between the early 80’s until 2002.
We overlapped quite a bit.
Jean-Jacques assures me that the cathedral in Chartres is far more spectacular, we went but it was a blur, but I think the one in Albi was one of the most impressive I have ever seen.
We stopped in Gaillac, on the way back , to buy vin en vrac, but we couldn’t find what we were looking for so we went home. Gaillac was interesting as well.
Cool. I was a student at Cal between ‘88 and ‘92, so I spent some time in Berkeley, too, but I lived in SF during that time and commuted.
I graduated from Berkeley in 1993. This is one of the reasons I started a blog, other than to keep up with our long time friends.Fill in missing connections.
We may have crossed paths many times on campus etc and now somehow you found my blog or I found yours, I don’t remember how it happened.
As they say in CA, that’s so weird, sorry to our CA friends but one thing I remember people saying incessantly was, that’s so weird, even when the phenomenon in question was perfectly explainable, and therefore not really that weird at all.
Digging deeper, were you an undergraduate or a graduate student at the time? What was your major or department?
I was an undergrad and I majored in History with a minor in City Planning. I didn’t spend too much time on campus and didn’t have any friends at school, I was comsumed with other things, making music, releasing records, going to concerts, in the local indie music scene. I actually have no friends that I met at University, I have many friends I am still in contact with from that time period but no one I met at Berkeley.
That’s funny to me because so many people look back at their college days and the friends they met with such nostalgia. My mother still is in contact with one of her old college roommates and she is . . . 21 years old . . . again. Anyway, what a strange coincidence.
Well, this is weird. I was an undergrad in Architecture then went on to do my grad work in… City Planning. I spent most of my days in Wurster Hall during those years. Athough I also spent some time over in the engineering department (I did a double masters).
Well I guess this phenomenon could actually be called weird, this stalking of me that you are doing.
I spent a lot of time in Wurster Hall too because I took many of my minor classes there.
Were you a TA or anything?
I took 2 fantastic courses from Paul Groth, History of the US Built Environment, something like level 1 and level 2. I never realized how famous he was. Since I left the Bay Area I have heard his name all the time, seen his name cited in articles etc. He was one of my favorite professors.
I also took the Housing class in the Planning dept with Nezar Alsayyad, Intro with Karen Christensen, and some others. I really thought I wanted to go into City Planning until I had 2 interships. One with the City of Berkeley, South Berkeley Economic Development Corp or some such thing. I was disgusted by the process. Every NIMBY concern was addressed to the minutest detail but the actual details of the economic development plans seemed to take a back seat. I thought if someone asked anyone in this meeting to state the reason they are here they wouldn’t have been able to. Maybe they actually thought they were there to make sure that a restaurant was not going to *GASP* be open past 9PM. I was mistakenly under the impression that the meeting was to present and hear feedback on various economic development ideas.
Then I had one with a non-profit housing assistance group in SF. It was much better and I felt valued for what I did but it was not enough discussion of ideas, just the obstacles.
My sister went into planning after I decided against it. She works for the DOT in DC. Every now and again I think I wished I had gotten into it but I guess it is not what it appears.
Did you work in planning?
I remember seeing bleary eyed students stumble out of their Wurster Hall studios at all hours of the night grumbling about this project or that project. Those architecture students sure seemed to have lots of work.
You described the planning process perfectly. Especially for the Bay Area. I was a Transportation Planner. My last job was at the executive level at Muni in SF. I was responsible for the 20 year capital plan and the funding thereof. It was mostly politics.
That was one of the reasons I loved my work, and one of the reasons I hated it. I left the profession in 2003.
As for the bleary-eyed students that inhabit Wurster, I wasn’t one of them. I worked on my projects during daylight hours. I was a commuter, and not a resident, so I couldn’t spend my nights in the studio.
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