At the Louvre last Sunday, my daughter Sara's friend Anastasija wanted to see Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting "La Giocanda" (or "La Jaconde" in French and the "Mona Lisa" in English). The room with the painting was packed, and even if you got to the front of the crowd, there was a rope barrier that kept you at a distance. So all you could see was a rather small painting hanging "over there", which could just as well have been a poster on someone's bedroom wall. In contrast, museum visitors could get quite close to the ancient Venus di Milo sculpture, and I felt its powerful presence as a singular object. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 August 2026)