The French have invaded our nation’s capital!
It may seem treason, but I for one am welcoming them with open arms.
Hereusement, I am not alone. Thousands of Washingtonians and tourists here from all over America are doing the same. The city has even been proclaimed, “Paris on the Potomac.” And doing so was an American idea.
The incursion, you see, is not by French Legionnaires in kepis and camos but by generous representations of French culture and cuisine, and people here are eating both up with equal bon appetit.
Contrast this with the general idiocy permeating the place two years ago, when the French government refused President Bush’s “On to Baghdad!” exhortation to help us rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction.
There were calls in Congress to boycott French wine and rename French fries “freedom fries.” The owner of a Languedoc bistro across the street from Ford’s Theatre, historic site of the Lincoln assassination, told me he was confronted by two passersby who denounced him as a traitor for running a French restaurant opposite a national shrine.
“We encountered fears of that sort of thing when we first started talking about `Paris on the Potomac’ two years ago,” said Victoria Isley, vice president and chief spokeswoman for the D.C. Convention and Tourism Corp. “But it hasn’t happened.”
No more freedom fries
Indeed, ask for “freedom fries” at a fast-food joint now and you’re likely to get a blank stare from the counter clerk. Of course, one usually gets a blank stare from fast-food counter clerks.
The idea of a French seasonal festival here originated when Isley’s organization took note of the fact that Washington’s prestigious National Gallery of Art, not to be intimidated by freedom fries-loving congressmen, was proceeding in partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago in staging a mammoth French art exhibition, “Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre” (on view here through June 12).
This overlapped with the local National Museum of Women in the Arts’ spring show on Berthe Morisot, the only female artist among the major French Impressionists (up through May 8), and the Phillips Collection’s spring exhibition on Paris artist Amedeo Modigliani (up through May 29).
They decided to make a themed season of it, got lots of other cultural venues, restaurants and hotels to join in, and — voila — “Paris on the Potomac.”
“Nine thousand people went through the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition the day it opened, and the Phillips’ Modigliani show increased attendance by 30 percent,” Isley said.
In all, her organization and other sponsors put together a calendar of 80 French-themed exhibitions, events, theatrical and concert performances and tours.
Among them, there have been, are, or will be a musical comedy version of “Little Red Riding Hood” set in Cajun Louisiana and featuring a Big, Bad Gator; a showing of Jean Luc Godard films; another of French “New Wave” Agnes Garda films; a five-course special menu Omakase with Burgundy wines at the Sushi-Ko restaurant; a daylong presentation by leading French chefs of the last 30 years of French cuisine in America; an ongoing exhibition at the International Spy Museum of spies at the Royal French Court, including those of Marie Antoinette, who used a code to communicate with her lovers, and Casanova, a professional French spy with a little side action who used everything imaginable to communicate with his lovers; an exhibition on George Washington’s pivotal role in the French and Indian War; an evening with French cabaret chanteuse Deborah Boily; another with cabaret singer Claire-Lise; performances of “Lorenzaccio,” by French playwright Alfred de Musset at the Shakespeare Theatre; and, at Washington’s Black Fashion Museum, “Une Americaine Paris,” an exhibition of the work of Carol Mongo, the first African-American to run the famed Parsons School of Design in Paris (on view through May 31, when everything ends).
I’ll refrain from going on about the Pink Poodle martinis, though I’ll mention that at a lovely little soiree at the French embassy the other night, Ambassador Jean-David Levitte did observe that the festival’s acronym — POP — is the same as the sound French champagne makes when uncorked.
Bien sur, but the actual, accurate acronym is POTP, though I’ve had champagne that opened that way as well.
For information on le tout ensemble, consult www.ParisOnThePotomac.org.
French flavor
One should note, as Isley did, that the city of Washington was laid out by a French architect, Pierre L’Enfant, which accounts for its many, many broad boulevards; low-rise buildings; squares, circles and parks; ubiquitous monuments and statues; and, in more recent years, cafe life.
I will note that were it not for French ships, soldiers and money coming to our aid, we would not have won our War of Independence (which coincidentally was happily concluded with the Treaty of Paris).
If you intrude politics on art and culture — to say nothing of Omakase with Burgundy wines — you gain nothing and stand to lose a lot.
If this be treason, I’ll have another glass. S’il vous plait.
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mkilian@tribune.com
