814 Tuesdays at the Louvre; Stone

0:00Running the world's largest art museum requires a well-orchestrated effort to keep everything ship shape. Coming up today on Travel with Rick Steves, Elaine Sciolino takes us behind the scenes at the Louvre in Paris. She tells us what goes on when the museum is closed to the public on Tuesdays. You've got to worry about the moths and the tapestries. Richard Rhodes had the rare privilege of being the last apprentice and the only non-Italian in over 700 years to be trained by the Freemasons Guild in Tuscany. They taught him the closely guarded sacred rules of medieval stonemasonry. As a material, it's capable of so much visual expression.

0:37Richard helps us see how rock fashioned into stonework and art is core to our humanity through the ages. It wears and weathers and becomes something better through its interaction with man. Take a peek inside the Louvre on its day off and get a feel for the art of stone. It's just ahead on today's Travel with Rick Steves. It's been said that there are occasions when even the stones can cry out. If you've ever had the chance to walk on a 2 ,000-year-old Roman road, you've felt the graciously weathered stones beneath your feet. Or if you've ever stood in awe in front of an Egyptian pyramid or Inca temple, or even when you admire the work of a craftsman or artist closer from home, you'll know that great stonework can sometimes seem to have a pulse.

1:25Richard Rhodes was the last apprentice to be trained by the Stoneworkers Guild of Tuscany. They taught him the techniques mastered by medieval cathedral builders and Renaissance artists, the people whose masterpieces are often highlights of our travels today. Richard joins us in a bit to help us look at stonework in a whole new light. Let's start today's Travel with Rick Steves with Paris-based journalist Elaine Cholino. She's been with us many times on Travel with Rick Steves to share what she's observed about French society from her longtime vantage point in Paris. Among her many titles, her latest book centers on the Louvre Museum.

2:01Its enormous collection of art and artifacts can be overwhelming if entered without a plan. And if your plans take you there on a Tuesday, you'll be disappointed, because that's the one day of the week the museum is closed to the public. Not counting unplanned closures for staff strikes or investigating a bold jewelry heist, Tuesdays are the one day when the Louvre takes care of things behind the scenes. Elaine investigated why for her book, Adventures in the Louvre. Yes, the museum is closed every Tuesday. And you can kind of tell from the tone of my voice that it's been frustrating over the years.

2:37But then when I got into filming for a TV show, I realized that for, what,$400 an hour, you can actually go to the museum on a Tuesday when it's closed and you can do your filming. Or if you're a fancy rock star, you can take your entourage. If you paid only$400 an hour, You got a deal. And Beyonce, who went in there, I think paid a lot more when she rented the Louvre for a night. Yes. So you shouldn't probably tell too many people, Rick, that you only paid$400 because a lot of people will pay$400 to get into the Louvre on a Tuesday. Sure. And when you go to the museum any other day and it functions and it works, well, it functions and it works because they can get it all organized and patched up and prepared on that precious one day a week.

3:27when the workers can come out, the big shots with their entourages can get that private tour, but the masses of the people have to wait until Wednesday. So, Elaine, you've done a lot of thinking about the Louvre to write your book, and you were impressed by all the people who work there, and you were impressed by all the work that goes on on a Tuesday. First of all, tell us, what happens on a Tuesday? Well, first I have to tell you that I went into the Louvre like a street reporter. I didn't go in as an art historian. I didn't go in as a tour guide. So I said, okay, this is a world I have to master by talking to people.

4:01So I wanted to ask questions, you know, how do you clean the pyramid? And that is really interesting. You've got to have a whole team of window washers on the inside and the outside of the pyramid with special kind of motorized suction cupped vehicles in order to clean the darn thing. And we should mention that's the glass pyramid entryway in the middle of the courtyard designed by I.M. Pei, such an iconic new part of the Louvre. Okay. And one of the dirty little secrets is that the pyramid leaks, as does much of the Louvre. Much of the Louvre is leaky like a sieve. You've got to patch these roofs.

4:45You've got to make sure that the paintings are not affected by water that's dripping down the walls, which in the past they have had to have emergency evacuations of paintings. You've got to worry about the moths and the tapestries. I mean, I went out with a woman who had to set the traps to get the moths so that they didn't eat all the tapestries. All this has to be done on a Tuesday. Cleaning the Louvre, keeping it dust free has to be done on a Tuesday. And you wrote that the Louvre has 500 ,000 works of art, but they can't hang all of those at the same time. There's 400 rooms, but that doesn't contain 500 ,000 works.

5:21So they swap in and out as, you know, at the whims of the curator. And that has to be done, of course, not when people are there, but on Tuesdays. Of course, it has to be done on Tuesdays. They have to water the plants on a Tuesday. I mean, everything that behind the scenes has to be done on a Tuesday. Also, you know, you've got union workers, and they've got rights, and you've got to have a day off. So that if you're going to have to work Saturday or Sunday, you get Tuesday off. Elaine Shalino is our guest from Paris right now as we look at Tuesdays at the Louvre, the one day of the week that you cannot get in.

5:55Elaine's been awarded by the French government for her work as a journalist, writing for the New York Times, and her books that help explain French society to the rest of the world. She's just written Adventures in the Louvre, How to Fall in Love with the World's Greatest Museum. Her website is elainechilino.com, spelled S-C-I-O-L-I-N-O. You know, I mentioned the word curator, and all over Europe when I'm updating my guidebooks, I can be frustrated because I've described a museum or a gallery perfectly, and then a year later there's a new curator and everything is rearranged. What's your take on curators and how do they matter for the museums?

6:35Well, the Louvre is a very classic, conservative place. Don't forget, the Louvre is an institution of the French state. It's run by the culture ministry and ultimately the president. It's the president of the republic who determines who is going to be the director of the Louvre so that you don't have the changes and the transformation that you've got in a lot of other kinds of more modern museums. The Louvre is sort of old-fashioned. You're going to find most of the works of art still there. Still, the curator has a personality, and a lot of times when there's a new curator, at least in other museums, you find that they can rearrange things.

7:17You're right. The Louvre is one of the most stable museums, I think, in all of Europe because of that conservative bent that you described. But still, the curator does have to make decisions about what do we buy, what do we show. a lot of people forget that a museum is not for tourists who come in once in their lifetime, but it's also for the local public that come in many, many times throughout their lifetime. And if they didn't have new things, people wouldn't want to come back. Well, you know, I would say, Rick, that the Louvre might be different from most other museums because decisions are made by committee.

7:55A curator has very little power individually. Everything has to go through a department and then the hierarchy of the Louvre and then the Ministry of Culture. You can't just decide to put a new feather on the victory of Samothrass, which happened several years ago when she was being restored, without an international committee of experts coming in and telling the curator, this is what we think should be done. Wow. This is one reason why the Louvre is so slow to change. I kind of compare it to like a great aircraft carrier that you have to turn around very, very slowly. This is Travel Trick Steves.

8:37We're talking with Elaine Shilino. Her book is Adventures in the Louvre, How to Fall in Love with the World's Greatest Museum. Let's just take one walk through the museum on a Tuesday. When I'm there on a Tuesday, for my budget price of$400 an hour, we are busy with an escort for security. They don't want people roaming around without an escort on Tuesday. We have a list of paintings that we want to film, and we have so much time that we have overall, and we have our way with these museums, and they control how much light we shine on the art and so on, but we get to do some very exciting work.

9:12At the same time, we've got people carrying paintings here and there, in and out for restoration or whatever. We've got big shots with their entourage. Tell us a little bit about what's going on with that. Well, I have to first say that you say you were led around by people who told you what you could and couldn't do, which is part of the Louvre mentality with visitors. And what they did to you on a grand scale, they did with me on a small scale, that in the beginning when I started this project, I was assigned a minder. There was a confidential document that was circulated around the Louvre that said, This book could be a risk for us, and she is not to talk to anybody at the Louvre unless she is with this one designated person.

10:04So I was forbidden from having normal conversations from people who worked at the Louvre. You know, I did make friends with a couple of people who I would sort of have over for lunch, and it was kind of like having a secret affair because I was playing. I didn't know they were so careful that way. Disneyland's that way also. Oh, it was just extraordinary. And it's part of the Louvre culture, which is closed and old-fashioned. Yes. Fascinating. Would you allow me to share one of my little secrets about what to do on a Tuesday when you arrive with your family at the gate of the Louvre and they tell you that it's closed and you're ready to kill the security guard or at least punch him or her in the nose?

10:48I am all ears. What would you do on a Tuesday? It always happens because you and I get into the Louvre sometimes on a Tuesday. So you sometimes see this poor family that's there. They're told, oh, the Louvre is closed today. And they think, oh, my God, I came all this way. I'm in front of the Louvre. What am I going to do? So what I told this one Spanish family one day who was just desperate, I said, you know what? About three blocks away, there's another little museum. It's called the Bibliotheque Nacional. It's the original National Library of Paris. It is just reopened. And in many ways, it's like a mini Louvre.

11:28And it's open today. And it's practically empty. And you can go for free in the big reading room. And your kids can read all of the comic books for free. And then if you want to go up the stairs up to the little museum, you can see more Greek vases than anywhere in France except for the Louvre. and you can go see, okay, you can't see paintings, but you can see the most incredible manuscripts of famous writers and artists. And when I said it the first time to this Spanish family, the wife of the family kissed me on both cheeks. She was so excited to be sent to another little museum. Oh, and there's a good cafe over there too.

12:11What is that museum called? It's the Bibliotheque Nacional Richelieu. It's the original National Library of France before they built the big, huge structure in the 13th arrondissement. And then on your way out, can't you go down into the metro station, the Palais du Louvre, and see exhibits in cases there? A hundred percent. And that's free. It's free and it's open all the time. You go into the Louvre Riverley Metro Station, and you see the most extraordinary copies of sculptures and this great film, too. They do a great film, and it's all free. That's great. Hey, Elaine Celino, you're full of great ideas, thanks to your love of Paris, and in particular, your love of the Palais du Louvre, the home of the great museum, the Louvre.

12:59Thanks for writing your book, Adventures in the Louvre, How to Fall in Love with the World's Greatest Museum. Well, thanks for inspiring me, Rick. All right. I'll see you in Paris, God willing, very soon. Yes. Okay, great.

13:15You can listen to Elaine's previous visits with us from our Travel with Rick Steves archives at ricksteves.com slash radio. How to breathe life into stone, sculptor and stonemason Richard Rhodes explains next. Back in 1981, speaking broken Italian and with no experience, a young American named Richard Rhodes somehow convinced an old Italian stonemason to accept him as an apprentice with an ancient guild. The Freemasons Guild in Siena provided a direct but secretive link to Europe's greatest cathedrals and buildings, passing down techniques from master to apprentice for centuries. After four months of a grueling proving period, Richard made it.

14:00He became the first non-Italian to be formally initiated into that Freemasons' guild in its 700-year history. He learned their closely guarded secrets of turning stone into transcendent works of art. And he got in just in time because the guild system died out soon afterwards. Today, Richard is known as the last apprentice in stone-working circles. He's been working with stone and sculpting for the last 40 years and preserves the closely guarded sacred rules of medieval stone masonry in his book, called Stone, Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery. Richard Rhodes, thanks for being with us today on Travel with Rick Steves.

14:41Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm so pleased to be here. What a story you've got. And reading through your book, it is clearly a labor of love, a love of stonework and masonry. Now, to me, you're kind of evangelical about all of this. I mean, I'd imagine to you, the average tourist must seem clueless about the powers and the majesty of a stonework, and what a shame it is not to get turned on by that. Now, as travelers, what should we appreciate about the stonework behind the great buildings that we're going to get to admire on our trips? It's a great question, and I think the beauty of it is we don't have to overthink it because the experience of stonework isn't almost entirely somatic, right?

15:25You're walking down the cobblestone streets or you're walking up the worn stairs of the Louvre and you feel the depression of centuries of foot traffic that people have made as we experience this. So as we travel in Europe, invariably, we're moved by what we feel in our body. And this is such a revelation. I remember how in the 80s, everyone first going to Europe and they'd invite you over to see their slide. Come see my slides from Europe. Yeah. And what would they talk about most? You know, this somatic experience of the cobblestone streets or the worn stairs or I ran my hand on the railings.

16:10Yes, yes. And the dip of it, you know, because... What is somatic? Somatic is the feeling in the body. There you go. Yeah, the somatic. Do you know the Pavmento Veneziano, the Venetian pavement? Oh, yeah. And it's a linoleum that's made with stone and it's an ancient thing and it's designed to flex as the foundations settle. And I like to stand barefoot on the pavement Veneziano and I'm just grounded in that history. And I like stone because you can touch it. I mean, when you think about artifacts, you're not supposed to touch things, but you can touch stone. You can touch it and it gets better when we touch it, right?

16:47Oh, I love it. So that's it. This is a sensuous kind of appreciation of history. Exactly. And I think that somehow that tactile connection to the past, you know, stone also is this sort of perfect medium because it wears and weathers and becomes something better through its interaction with man. Like, and we make a distinction in the book. It wears and weathers, but that's an interesting thing because now we almost tear things down if it wears and weathers. But wearing and weathering, it's a glue to who we are. Exactly, and it offers this very intimate connection. I make a distinction in the book between rock, which is as the material appears in the landscape, and then rock becomes stone once we craft it, through the hand of man or through the wear of man, right?

17:43That's interesting. So we're talking about stone. I've been confused about that because I was going to say rocks, but there's a difference. So stone is worked. Stone is worked or worn. Or worn, yeah. Yeah, so as, and what's fascinating about it is it gets better, right? It records man's... They put rocks on the Apian Way, and then later, then it becomes stonework. Well, interestingly, so as soon as you quarry it, it becomes stone because you've already worked it in the extraction. Oh, there you go. Oh, okay. And then the Roman roads are fascinating because they actually shaped them into hexagons, mostly, into polygonal shapes.

18:22but they tapered the bottom of each stone like a pencil. So imagine that as you drove on it or marched on it, it continued to seed itself into the landscape, which is why William Manchester, in writing about the roads of Europe in the 1500s, said that the Roman roads were still, after 1 ,000 or 1 ,500 years, were still the best roads in Europe because of that seeding technique. So the geometry of the polygonal shape of the Appian Way locks it in place, but the point on the bottom drives it into the substrate. And through use, the road got better and better and stronger and stronger and stronger.

19:05So I've always marveled at how resilient Roman roads have been because you encounter them all over Europe, it seems. My feeling of cobblestone is if you're a revolutionary, you can pick up one of those stones and throw it. Very useful. Very useful. Very useful readily. But with Romans, it's got that pencil bottom and it's anchored into the... And the interlocking geometry, which fights the spreading forces, right? So the dispersing spreading forces is one of the great things to be solved in stonemasonry. So we're always strategizing about how to deal with those forces in a building, but particularly in pavements.

19:44And because the spreading forces, you know, things want to drift apart. So in cities, you know, those beautiful piazzas are lined by buildings and that contains the spreading forces. But the Romans had this strategic method of how to keep the road together through the interlocking geometry and this point that continued to bed it, which is why those roads never drifted apart and never destroyed and are still travelable today. But that's stone, not rock, right? Because it's worked and improved by the hand of man, which is such a beautiful thing. This is Travel with Rick Steves, and we're exploring the timeless beauty of stone and how humans have used it throughout history with sculptor and stonemason Richard Rhodes.

20:27He's compiled the lessons he's learned from decades of sculpting stone in his book. It's called Stone, Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery. It includes the ancient masonry rules passed down through the centuries. Richard operates the Rhodes Work Design Studio in Seattle, and his website is roadsworksdesign.com. That's spelled R-H-O-D-E-S. Now, Richard, I talked about these secret rules of ancient masonry, and for those of us who aren't stonemasons, it's all just a, it's confusing. Can you please just kind of straighten this up? Masons, masonry, Freemasons, Masonic Lodge, just in a moment, can you kind of, what is all that?

21:11Yeah, that is a tangle. Because Masonic Lodge, I don't think of guys with chisels. I think of hocus-pocus behind the scenes with fraternities. Yeah. So this is a fascinating story. Imagine that the Freemasons were the first guild of Europe, and they were free men. So it really became a separate class of people for the first time because you had the peasants, you had the royalty, and you had the church. And then suddenly you had this very small group of free men. They were the best and the brightest. Essentially, they had worked their way out of, you know, through either good deeds or through special obvious talent.

21:51And they were the master builders, right? So they came together and they created a lodge. And they were allowed to, you know, they could essentially police themselves. They had their own rules. You have to imagine that the secrets of the lodge, which is the basis of this, were the state secrets of the time. Now, these are very simple secrets, right? Like the book just lays them out. There's like seven of them. So it's not so complex, except imagine if I'm a king and my masons can build a bridge over a 50-foot cavern, but your masons can only do a 20-foot cavern. Well, you've got to run an extra 25 miles to get your army around that thing.

22:35All of these infrastructural improvements, these were state secrets of the time. And that's how they kept, you know, to keep the secret, we had the secret handshake. We had how do these masters recognize each other? And this was all like defense in an age of feudalism when you've got these petty little dukes and kings and so on. And you've got chaos in Europe, no central government power vacuum. But you do have the universal language of educated people, which is Latin. And you got this rise of stoneworking talents with these people who can do it. And you'll find great Gothic churches and castles and so on being built all over Europe sharing, comparing notes and having roving bands of architects and masons that can do that.

23:21Is that from that environment? That's exactly right. And so that's the beginning of the guild. And so this was so successful that as other trades started to emerge, they wanted to be part of the guild too. So what happens is, particularly in Venice, they finally broke apart. They were like, we actually don't want to hang out with the Freemasons because all they want to talk about is geometry. And it's really boring. And we're now doing international trade and international banker. So it's sort of the ultimate boys club. So they split off from the Freemasons Guild. Then you had the operative branch of the Freemasons, which are the people that do the geometry and the stone carving and build these things, which is the group that I studied with.

24:03And this other group, the kind of mystical political organization. Oh, so that's the schism there. That's the schism. Masonic lodges and workers' union. That's right. And so that mystical political union comes to the United States. It's very, very popular. Every president was a mason until modern times. It has nothing to do with stoneworking, masonry. It did, right? Which is why they still have the symbols and the tools of the Masonic Lodge because it was originally they were the operative. But the secrets had nothing to do with being able to build great stuff that they passed around. Well, the original secrets, the secrets that I reveal in this book, which are really, you know, about how to do the stone.

24:47How to do stone, right? And it was originally like trade secrets. Okay. Without getting into all the legalities of this, can you just tell me what these things are? Well, a simple one has to do with the grain of stone. Now, your listeners may not realize that stone, like wood, has a grain that's fundamental to its use. In your book, I saw these horizontal grains in sandstone, I think, and they're all stacked smartly because if they did it the other way, it'd fall apart. Well, right. So stone turns out to be like a deck of cards. And if you set it perpendicular to the force, you can stack, you know, miles high.

25:26If you turn it on its edge, then it delaminates. Oh, yeah. And so that was one of the main secrets. What a terrible thing. If you've got a building and it starts to delapidate, you better call your mason and say, you've got to move all these stones 90 degrees. And there are cathedrals that were... Delaminating cathedrals? Delaminating cathedrals. Okay, that's one of the sacred laws. This is cool. What's another one? Another one would be... Just real simple ones. So one of my favorites, which has to do with aesthetics, is build it sweet to the eye, which sounds simple, right? But what this means is, in modern vernacular, we would say, you know, if it looks wrong, even though you put your level on it, if it looks wrong, it's wrong.

26:08Sweet to the eye. So this is important because if you look at the Parthenon, the Parthenon bows 20 inches to counteract the visual sagging that we see. It's one of the most sophisticated buildings human beings have ever built. Yeah. But it's not straight. It's bent in order to look straight. In order to look straight. That's radical. It's so radical and so exciting. Richard Rhodes is a master stonemason with a studio in Seattle. And just down the road, the Tacoma Art Museum is among the places where you can view his work. Richard's written the book Stone, Ancient Practice to Modern Mastery to celebrate the marvel that masterful stonework can be around the world.

26:52His book includes evocative photographs he's taken to view great works in person all around the world. His website is RhodesWorksDesign.com. R-H-O-D-E-S. So when you say, in your book you write, if one danger of the secrets is that they might be revealed, in this case, a sad but greater danger is that they might be forgotten and lost. The real thing is, let's appreciate these ancient bits of wisdom because they apply today, even though they seem counterintuitive today, where they might not have seemed so counterintuitive before. They absolutely apply today. And this is part of the mission. You know, as I was joking with you, no one pays you to write a book when you're a stonemason or a stone sculptor.