Several years ago, a door opened in my life on a trip to France with my husband Ray when we visited the Pompidou Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Paris.

When Ray and I first got together, I understood quickly that he had both a great love for and much knowledge about art. I, on the other hand, knew next to nothing about famous artists or art movements. I knew I liked the print of the poppies by Monet that hung in our family’s living room and I was partial to van Gogh’s paintings, but Modern Art was far out of my realm. I could recognize a Picasso or maybe even a Miro, but that was about the extent of my exposure. I had no idea what I was looking at when I saw Marcel Duchamp’s readymades or the found art pieces of Robert Rauschenberg. The specifics of the who, what, or why of different art periods were out of my realm of knowledge. That all changed on that trip to the Pompidou.

Over three days, I had what I consider one of the peak experiences in my life so far. We went to the Pompidou each of those days and spent hours pouring over the paintings and exploring the special exhibits. The most significant experience for me was that the museum is devoted to the history of 20^th and 21^st Century Art movements with room after room filled with artwork from painters and sculptors starting with the beginning of Modern Art and ending with present-day.

Each room had information on the walls that guided a novice like me through the different art periods and explained how each period was either a rejection of the last or a jumping-off place from where the previous period had left off. Seeing the progression allowed me to understand how the artists took what came before and either went in the opposite direction or enhanced what they had seen. A door flew open in my mind and I could suddenly connect the dots of these movements as represented by artists from each era. I will never forget the exhilaration I felt when this information moved from a swirl of images and facts to a cohesive awareness of what I had just learned.

Ray and I will soon return to Paris and will most definitely visit the Pompidou again along with several other art museums. I am so excited and am also grateful that I now can share Ray’s love of art with him. This has become one of our deepest bonds and allows us the chance to plan an “art” vacation just so we can see paintings and sculptures in person that we have only before viewed in books.

I can’t wait.