Rodin Museum

For the museum in Paris, see Musée Rodin.

Rodin Museum

Entrance to Rodin Museum
Established	November 29, 1929 (1929-11-29)
Location	2201-2299 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Coordinates
Website	www.rodinmuseum.org
Philadelphia Register of Historic Places

The Rodin Museum is a museum located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which contains the largest collection of sculptor Auguste Rodin's works outside Paris. For the first time since the museum opened in 1929, the doors were closed for a three-year, $9 million renovation which brought this museum back to its original splendour. Doors were reopened to the public on July 12, 2012.

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 Thinker

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

• 

  Burghers of Calais

• 

  The Gates of Hell

• 

  The Colossal Head of Balzac

• 

  Bacchus in the Vat

See also

• Benjamin Franklin Parkway

External links

• Listing at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings