Rodin Museum in Philadelphia
Description
The Rodin Museum is an art museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which contains the largest collection of sculptor Auguste Rodin's works outside Paris[verification needed]. Opened in 1929, the museum is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In 2012, the museum re-opened after a three-year, $9 million renovation that brought the museum back to its original vision of displaying Rodin's works.
Founding
The Museum was the gift of movie-theater magnate Jules Mastbaum (1872–1926) to the city of Philadelphia. Mastbaum began collecting works by Rodin in 1923 with the intent of founding a museum to enrich the lives of his fellow citizens. Within just three years, he had assembled the largest collection of Rodin's works outside Paris, including bronze castings, plaster studies, drawings, prints, letters, and books. In 1926, Mastbaum commissioned French architects Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber to design the museum building and gardens. Unfortunately, the collector did not live to see his dream realized, but his widow honored his commitment to the city, and the Museum was inaugurated on November 29, 1929. Murals in the museum were executed by the painter Franklin C. Watkins.
Collection
The best-known of Rodin's works, The Thinker (1880–1882), sits outside the museum in the entry courtyard. Visitors once entered through a cast of The Gates of Hell, located at the main entrance to the museum, which is no longer used. This massive 5.5-m-tall bronze doorway was originally created for the Museum of Decorative Arts (which was to have been located in Paris but never came into existence). Rodin sculpted more than 100 figures for these doors from 1880 until his death in 1917. This casting is one of the three originals; several others have been made since. Several of his most famous works, including The Thinker, are actually studies for these doors which were later expanded into separate works.
The museum's several rooms house many more of the artist's works, including The Kiss (1886), Eternal Springtime (1884), The Age of Bronze (1875–76), and The Burghers of Calais, a monument commissioned by the City of Calais in 1884.
Image gallery
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Burghers of Calais
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The Gates of Hell
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The Colossal Head of Balzac
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Bacchus in the Vat
Street view
Reviews
The inside is well lit and laid out. It isn't a large museum by any stretch, but it is a wonderful hidden gem on the parkway.
Easily reached either by walking or taking one of the tour bus companies.
Small but very pretty, with a lovely garden.
I think Rodin's art is about emotion and idea. It's as if the hands of each sculpture are speaking whole sentences. But only the most critical details of most sculptures are filled in, the rest left almost brutally rough or omitted entirely. The beautifully smooth sculptures are all other artists copies of Rodin's originals.
The only other Rodin exhibition I've seen is the figures from hell at Stanford U in California and it left me with a similar feeling of ambiguity. Maybe it's that both fall short of the tales of the beauty of the Musée Rodin in Paris.
Don't get me wrong, the price is right (donate what you want) and there are great works here, well worth seeing, in a lovely garden setting and beautiful building. Just not as mind blowing as I had expected.
