sam membership is one of the best tickets in town. good parties too. saw a couple of drunk tuxedoed old white guys brawling while los lobos were playing at a tent show there! and a great place to walk through during a midday drunk. peace ese.

If you work or live downtown, I heartily recommend a SAM membership.

Don't bother getting more than the Patron level - but do remember the entire thing is tax-deductible.

oh, and when they did this exhibit at the Palmes de Court in Paris, there was a bathroom inside.

Remember to move around and change your angles to the paintings - don't just shuffle along like sheep.

They let me leave and reenter for a bathroom break. But it's probably because I'm pretty.

Sigh. Still on the pricey side for me, which is why I'm not going to see it. I had a chance to see it for $7.50 a while back, but I wasn't able to make it on the date that was available. :(

I peed behind The Goat.

@6 that explains the smell.

they *do* allow you to go use the room of rest - but you have to stop by the exit place (where people turn in their audio guides) and get a laminated 'pass' to re-enter via the exit (and pick up your audio guide again if you had one to begin with.)

i don't identify with @4, but they did let me do it with these few steps that really worked pretty well once i got to the exhibit exit.

@3, oh, good, you're dredging that up again.

You never saw any Picasso exhibit at the "Palmes de Court" because no such place has ever put on a Picasso exhibit and in fact no such place has ever existed.

Indeed the word "palmes" doesn't mean what you think it does in French; it's "flippers". It could mean "palm fronds" to an illiterate, but that would still be wrong, because the place you are thinking of is named after "palms" as in "the palm of your hand", which is a different word: "paume".

You are almost certainly thinking of the Musée du Jeu de Paume, which was the chief repository of impressionist works in Paris until they were moved in 1986 to the Musée d'Orsay. They only ever exhibited possibly one Picasso there, and never had a Picasso exhibit.

The current occupant of the building is the Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, which shows contemporary art, not Picassos. It occupies the site of tennis courts where "jeu de paume" was played -- tennis played with the palms of the hands instead of rackets. This is undoubtedly where your confusion arises, though you refuse to admit it.

The exhibit at SAM comes from the Musée Picasso. It has never been exhibited anywhere else, certainly not in the Jeu de Paume, or the "Courts de Palme".

You are a phony and an imposter, a charlatan and a fake, Will. You've retailed this lie about the "Courts de Palme" here before, but the nature of your mistake proves that you know nothing about these museums you claim to have visited, or Paris, or the French language. You're an utterly bogus person.