Who ever said there was no night life in Luxembourg? Ever since I arrived here, possibilities to spend an evening at an interesting place and/or event in good company have been plentiful. One of such occasions was undoubtedly last Saturday’s “Museum Night”. Which, incidentally, partly clashed with another all-important event, the Luxembourg vs. Israel football match. Since some of my new friends had a vested interest in the event, they set out to the museums a bit later on. I especially missed my new pal Tom!


photo by M & R 🙂

The eight annual event organised by the association of “d’stater muséeën” drew a crowd of 16,000 night owls or 30% more than the previous year into the six participating museums, which opened their doors widely from 6 pm until 1 am for a one-in-all ticket of €12 or €6 and supplemented their regular exhibitions with additional programmes such as live music, dance performances, films, small-scale theatre productions and made sure nobody went hungry. Or thirsty for that matter. One of the museums offered wine tasting as a side activity.

To be quite honest, I expected an event such as this to be free of charge just as my beloved Ljubljana’s Museum Night is, but at least the workshops for kids did not require ticket purchase.

Each of the museums has its own “that little extra” to offer, but personally, I was most taken by the work of Philippe Jacq in the Luxembourg Casino (yes, the casino in question does double as an art gallery on a full-time basis). Jacq’s installation was part of the “Best of Robert Schuman”exhibition representing the nominees for the most prestigious award of the “Grande Région” that has been given by the cities of Luxembourg, Trier, Metz and Saarbrücken since 1991.

The feelings inspired by the mixture of grossness of stuffed chickens straight (or not) from Psycho, a fine sense of humour and an evident knack for making connections between pop culture and political affairs cannot really be translated into words very easily. But I can offer a few random shots to begin with.

Here’s to many happy returns for the Museum Night in Luxembourg! This town oozes awareness of the importance of art and culture. Even after passing the title of the European Capital of Culture on to Liverpool, Stavanger and Sandnes. Incidentally, something tells me I’ll be visiting Vilnius in 2009! Right, Monika and Indre? 🙂