Notes From The Garret

Home to the hypnotic Lady and the Unicorn tapestries,  the Musée National du Moyen Âge, Paris’s Cluny Museum, currently presents an exhibit on unicorns.  Indulging our inner mystic, seer, and innocent, we can let ourselves be carried away by the millenia of the creature's mystery and fascination. The following is a mere smattering of what the show has to offer. To put us in the spirit, the small park at the back has a Unicorn Crossing sign and another pleading with us not to feed them. Gd knows what tourists might try to pass of as unicorn fodder. I admit, I did have a dashed hope to see the Unicorn Hunt tapestries from the Cloisters. (A friend, docent at the New York museum in the 90s, recalled how she began to explain to an elementary school group the anti-poison properties that the unicorn horn was thought to possess and a hand shot up in the class. When she called on him, he rolled his eyes to the back of his head and impatient said, « that’s not all you know...