Reminder to Look Up

As a doctoral student in 1980s Paris, I spent day after day beneath the nine umbrella domes of the Bibliothèque Nationale’s mid-19th-century reading room. Its architect, Henri Labrouste, was a protagonist of my thesis, so dreaming toward the ceiling— pierced by oculi and supported by slim columns—still counted as study. I’ve since returned innumerable times, even hosting a dinner for international scholars after the space closed for repairs in 2010 and making it the focus of MoMA’s 2013 Labrouste exhibition. But nothing prepared me to see the room this January, on the eve of its inauguration as the library of the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art. The ceiling has been cleaned of grime so that the domes’ brilliant egg-white enamel now reflects shadowless light onto open books far below. Meanwhile, the columns’ revived original color scheme (pale grays rather than the muddy brown that greeted readers for decades) only adds to the sensation I’ve long felt—that the domes, rather than being held aloft, are tethered down by the cast-iron columns, like a great canvas sheet billowing over an ancient arena.