A girl listening to an audio guide in front of one of the 8 famous paintings of water lilies that Claude Monet had placed in the oval rooms in Paris’s Orangerie. His choices were precise. He chose a building between the Seine river and the Tuileries Gardens. The rooms are oriented east-west, receiving the changing natural light via an open ceiling throughout the day. The painter wanted to create a meditative space to escape the world outside. Today there are long oval benches in the middle of the rooms, but it’s most powerful to stand up close to the paintings.