My Childhood King

Good evening children and adults,

Due to wonderful weather, the beginning of summer here in Paris, I haven't been as motivated to follow up on my artfancies. It's just too beautiful outside to spend time at the museums...

With that said, there are other possibilities! For example the "Nuit européenne des musées". It is an event that happens in all the major cities in europe, at least the ones cool enough to participate! The big museeums and institutions keep their doors open until at least 23:00 at night - and you can visit them for free!! Plus it's at night, so you don't miss a beautiful sunny, warm, summery day.

Anyways, me and my friends chose a museum, we all hadn't visited before, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. But mostly we chose it for the current exhibition: "Les histoires de Babar". It was the clear choice, everyone knew who Babar was, eventhough we all grew up on different continents.

So, hooray, we saw a very cute and amazing exhibition about the famous elephant-king in the dashing green suit. I'm sure by now even your memory found the lovely emperor again.

It was fascinating to learn, how the story of Babr and his family evolved and got created in the first place.
One night in 1930, Cécile de Brunhoff, a mother like most, starts telling a story of a small  elephant who has to flee the jungle for the city after a hunter kills his mother. The children of Cécile were so fascinated by the story that they told it to their father, a painter, Jean de Brunhoff - the creator of Babar. The first edition of "Histoire de Babar" was published in 1931.

The exhibition carried alot of the original artwork for the books by Brunhoff, aswell as different letters, notes, sketches and objects of Babar-merchandise. The exhibition also showed how the story of Babar evolved through time, how the royal family grew and how the stories were adapted to new media and a new generation of children. Cartoons and computergames included. There was also a display of the first Babar-stuffed animal and the latest.

The exhibition was so lovely and it made me think back to those days were me and my sister used to cram infront of those colorful books and find out, what Babar and his family and animalfriends were up to now.