Marcel Proust’s bed – it is not what I expected to see in a museum. But the Musee de Histoire Carnavalet (the Carnavalet History of Paris Museum) is full of surprises. And after all the author is a famous denizen of the city of light.

Proust’s bed was central to his life and work, famously where he wrote much of his seven-volume masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) in a cork-lined room designed to help with his severe asthma and sensitivity to light and sound.

Reconstructed at the Musee Carnavalet in Paris, this bed and room represent his isolated world, a hub of creativity where he penned his masterpiece over many years, sleeping by day and working at night. It was published between 1913 and 1927.

Looking for a short cut, I had recently read the one volume suggested as a standalone novel, Swann in Love. Not long afterwards I was intrigued to find myself standing in front of his bed, by accident really.

In June 2025, during a week in Paris, my wife Sandra and I were keen to visit the Musee Picasso Paris in the fashionable Marais district of the French capital.

But upon arrival we were told that the staff were on a snap strike, which is so typically Parisian.

So, we found nearby the Musee Carnavalet, the oldest City of Paris museum. It opened to the public on February 25, 1880, in the Carnavalet mansion (Hôtel Carnavalet), also located in the Marais, a Paris district where the architectural heritage is particularly well-preserved.

The museum has recently been refurbished and is utterly gorgeous with a beautiful garden restaurant, Joli. The attraction for me is also the size. It is a smaller museum and I love that.

The Louvre Museum is daunting; it’s like attending a stadium and so it is for major museums everywhere. Before Paris, we visited London and the queue outside the British Museum was never-ending.

In these behemoth museums, you get to see a smattering of what is on display, and you have to fight the crowds. I remember being in a crowd of several hundred trying to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. But at smaller museums you can see just about everything and there is no rush. You can get through in an hour or two without even hurrying and, having a short attention span, I love that.

In Paris there are numerous options in the smaller museum category. I would also put Musee de l’Orangerie, dedicated to the work of Monet and other Impressionists and post-Impressionists, on your smaller museums list.

Another hidden treasure is the Salon Frédéric Chopin within the Polish Library on Île Saint-Louis, featuring manuscripts, letters and personal objects that once belonged to the famous composer. Our son Hamish was a Chopin freak at the time of that visit, and we were determined to find this obscure little museum, which is not much more than a room.

Another favourite in Paris is the Musee Rodin. That went on the list, inspired by watching Owen Wilson visiting it in Woody Allen’s charming cinematic tribute Midnight in Paris.

The author on a visit to one of his favourites, Musee Rodin. Photo: Phil Brown

Upon his death in 1917 the sculptor Auguste Rodin stated “I bequeath to the state all my works in plaster, marble, bronze and stone, together with my drawings and the collection of antiquities that I had such pleasure in assembling for the education and training of artists and workers. And I ask the state to keep all these collections in the Hôtel Biron, which will be the Musee Rodin, reserving the right to reside there for the rest of my life.”

The Musee Rodin is indeed set within the beautiful Hôtel Biron and its extensive sculpture gardens, near the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides. After an hour and a half there, we wandered off into Saint-Germain for lunch. Perfect.

Having this short attention span, I seek out smaller museums wherever we go.

A perennial favourite is the Jim Thompson House Museum, the Bangkok home and Asian art collection of the late James H.W. Thompson, also known as the “Thai Silk King”. Thompson was a former spy who mysteriously disappeared on a visit to Malaysia in 1967.

His house museum is in a quiet lane in Pathum Wan overlooking a klong (canal). It’s a tranquil oasis in the middle of Bangkok.

Another favourite is the Peranakan Museum in Singapore, again, one of those delightful accidental finds. Singapore has some amazing larger museums, but this one is a compact affair that we stumbled upon after a stroll through nearby Fort Canning Park.

The Peranakan Museum explores the art and culture of Peranakan communities in South-East Asia and possesses one of the finest and most comprehensive public collections of Peranakan objects. Peranakan refers to mixed heritage communities in South-East Asia (like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia) descended from early foreign settlers (Chinese, Indian, Arab, European) who married local Malays, creating unique cultures blending ancestral traditions with indigenous Malay customs, known for distinct cuisine, fashion, language and architecture.

Checking out the antiquities at Athens’ beautiful Benaki Museum of Green Culture. Photo: Phil Brown

In Athens recently, the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture was a highlight. It is housed in one of the most beautiful neoclassical-style buildings in Athens, near the National Garden and the Hellenic Parliament. Again, it is more compact than some other museums and therefore less daunting.

In Honolulu a few years back we visited the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture and Design, in the former home of heiress Doris Duke near Diamond Head in Honolulu, Hawaii. It is owned and operated as a public museum of the arts and cultures of the Islamic world by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

I think I can date my interest in small museums back several decades to when we stumbled across one of the most charming house museums we have ever visited – the Barbara Hepworth House Museum and Sculpture Garden.

We were in St Ives in England, surfing at Porthmeor Beach. After one surf, we found this little museum, and we knocked it over in an hour or so.

As I said I have a short attention span and frankly, when it comes to museums, less is often more as far as I am concerned.

The delightful Jim Thompson House Museum in Bangkok. Photo: AAP

Some small museums worth a visit

Musee Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris: Located at 23 Rue de Sévigné in the Marais district of Paris this museum is dedicated to the history of the city. The museum occupies two neighbouring mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau. It contains furnished rooms from different periods of Paris history, historic objects, and a very large collection of paintings of Paris life; it features works by artists including Jacques-Louise David. The art works depict the city’s history and development, and its notable characters.

Musee de L’Orangerie: This museum is an art gallery of Impressionist and post-Impressionists in the west corner of the Tuileries Garden next to the Place de la Concorde in Paris. It is most famous as the permanent home of eight large Water Lilies murals by Claude Monet and contains works Cezanne, Picasso, Rousseau and others.

The Salon Frederic Chopin: This is a small, single-room museum inside the historic Polish Library in Paris at 6 Quai d’Orléans on the Île Saint-Louis, showcasing Chopin’s personal items, manuscripts, death mask, and his chair, preserving his legacy within Paris, the city where he spent his final years. The library itself, founded in 1838, is a major Polish cultural centre and archive, housing vast collections of Polish history and literature, alongside the Chopin and Mickiewicz Museums.

The Jim Thompson House Museum: This museum in Pathum Wan Bangkok showcases the beautifully preserved traditional Thai teak houses of the American entrepreneur who revived the Thai silk industry, featuring his extensive collection of Asian art and antiques amidst lush gardens, all while hinting at his unsolved mysterious disappearance in 1967, offering a unique blend of Thai architecture, art, and a captivating historical enigma.

The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden: This charming house museum in St Ives, Cornwall (a famous artists’ colony) preserves the 20th-century sculptor Barbara Hepworth’s studio and garden much as they were when she lived and worked there. She purchased the site in 1949 and lived and worked there for 26 years until her death in a fire on the premises in 1975.

Benaki Museum of Greek Culture: This museum, established and endowed in 1930 by Antonis Benakis in memory of his father Emmanuel Benakis, is housed in the Benakis family mansion in Athens, Greece. The family, including famous writer Penelope Delta, bequeathed their mansion and vast collections of Greek art, culture, and history to create the museum, symbolising a commitment to Greek heritage and culture that continues today through various annexes and ongoing collections.

Peranakan Museum: This Singapore museum explores the art and culture of Peranakan communities in South-East Asia and possesses one of the finest and most comprehensive public collections of Peranakan objects. The newly refreshed Peranakan Museum holds brand-new permanent galleries presenting exceptional objects from Peranakan material culture, as well as a more contemporary exhibition design and an enhanced museum visitor experience. One key shift in the curatorial approach was to also include contemporary expressions of Peranakan culture, by way of works of contemporary art, fashion, design and craft, created by local and regional artists, artisans and designers, and inserted into every gallery. The three floors of the museum explore Peranakan life through themes related to origins, home, and style as aspects of identity.

Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware: Set in in Hong Kong Park in Central, Hong Kong. Before being converted to a museum devoted to tea ware, it was the office and residence of the Commander of British forces in Hong Kong. Built in 1846, the two-storey edifice is in fact the oldest building in the “Greek revival” style in Hong Kong. The KS Lo Gallery features Chinese ceramics and stone seals donated by the KS Lo Foundation. Besides organising exhibitions, the museum regularly arranges educational tours, tea demonstrations and art lectures to promote Chinese tea culture and the appreciation of Chinese ceramics and seals.

Charles Dickens Museum: In London, in a charming Bloomsbury terraced street, you can visit the only home lived in by Charles Dickens that is still standing. While living here from 1837 to 1839, he wrote several of his early novels, including Oliver Twist, and you can even see his writing desk. They run wonderful temporary exhibitions and decorate the whole house for Christmas.

The Frick Collection: This is an art museum on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was established in 1935 to preserve the collection of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick. The collection consists of 14th- to 19th-century European paintings, as well as other pieces of European fine and decorative art.

Heide Museum of Modern Art: This charming museum is in Bulleen, a suburb of Melbourne. Established in 1981, the museum exhibits modern and contemporary art across three buildings and is set within heritage-listed gardens and a sculpture park. It began as the home of notable art patrons John and Sunday Reed, who turned their dairy farm into a haven for Australian modernist artists in the 1930s and 1940s, fostering figures like Sidney Nolan and Joy Hester. Today, it is a public art museum and sculpture park on the Yarra River and well worth a relaxing visit.

Bundanon: This is a significant Australian arts destination on the NSW South Coast, gifted to the nation in an act of extraordinary generosity the artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne. It features an award-winning art museum and educational facilities, a wildlife sanctuary and artists’ studios and is home to the Boyd Collection.