Culture in the City by Monica Conrady

or those us without a trip to Paris on their travel agenda this summer, a visit to San Francisco’s de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park and the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park may be the next best thing.

While Paris’ famed Musée d’Orsay, the converted train station on the Seine.’s left bank, is undergoing extensive renovations, San Francisco is playing host to two exhibitions of paintings from its permanent collection.

All this is guaranteed to make you wish you were in Paris.

The de Young: Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d.’Orsay,is the first, which will run from now through September 6.

Visitors will be treated to nearly 100 works by Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas and more. Familiar paintings such as Manet’s The Fifer. (the poster child for the show), Monet’s The Gare Saint-Lazare and Degas’ The Dancing Lesson grace the museum’s galleries. Also present is James Abbott McNeil Whistler’s Arrangement in Gray and Black, No. 1, aka “Whistler’s Mother.”

Following on the heels of the “Birth of Impressionism” will be Post- Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, This is when the works of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec will debut. Van Gogh’s Self Portrait and his Starry Night over the Rhone alone would be a compelling reason to return to the de Young, but there will be Gauguin’s Tahitian Women, On the Beach, Cezanné’s Still Life with Onions and others to look forward to as well. (September 25 to January 18, 2011.)

The Legion of Honor: City of Light: Impressionist Paris. To get a sense of what Paris was like from the mid- 19th century to the early 20th century—the time of the Impressionists.—the exhibition currently at the Legion will take you to the streets, theaters and hidden corners of the city the Impressionists knew so well. Featuring more than 180 prints, paintings and photographs by Bonnard, Renoir, James Tissot, Mary Cassatt and others, the exhibition complements the “Birth of Impessionism” at the de Young.

An added treat are the color posters that were seen all over Paris in the 1890s—posters by Toulouse Lautrec, Jules Chéret and Alphonse Mucha—advertising all manner of things from theater shows, to Dubonnet apéritif, to motocycles. (Through September 26.)

All this is guaranteed to make you wish you were in Paris!

The de Young Museum: Tel. 888/901-6645; deyoungmuseum.org

Legion of Honor: Tel. 415/750-3600; www.famsf.org