RODIN MUSEUM IN PARIS REOPENS AFTER THREE YEARS OF RENOVATION COSTING €16M

USPA NEWS - The 18th-century Parisian mansion where the sculptor Auguste Rodin produced his most famous works has been fully renovated for the first time since his death. The French prime minister on Monday inaugurated the revamped Rodin Museum in Paris, which is set to open to the public later...

The 18th-century Parisian mansion where the sculptor Auguste Rodin produced his most famous works has been fully renovated for the first time since his death. The French prime minister on Monday inaugurated the revamped Rodin Museum in Paris, which is set to open to the public later this week following three years of renovation work.


Paris' historic Rodin Museum, until recently plagued by a leaking roof, peeling gold leaf and creaky floorboards, has been returned to its former splendor following a 16 million euro ($17.4 million) three-year restoration.

The museum, dedicated to the work of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, famed for his statue 'The Thinker', is one of the country's most popular museums with around 700,000 visitors a year. More than 80 of the 123 restored sculptures are moulds, including the first ever known figure of The Thinker.

Also on show are the studies of his monument to the writer Honoré de Balzac, one that triggered so much outrage by departing from contemporary sculpture that its commissioner, the Society of Men of Letters, rejected it outright.

On show is the mould of a dressing gown supplied by Balzac´s tailor that he threw in to plaster to make his sculpture as realistic as possible. Many of the new figures on display were remoulded in plaster and terracotta after being set in bronze: for Rodin, a work was rarely truly finished. The museum has also brushed off earlier and later versions of some of the characters in his macabre The Gates of Hell, a six-metre-high doorway commissioned in 1880 to adorn a museum that never opened. (The Independent)

The museum reopens its gilded doors to the public November 12, on Rodin's 175th birthday. It boasts new rooms, over 200 new sculptures, state-of-the-art pedestals and - for the first time - toilets and wheelchair access.

'We have substituted modern bronzes by original plasters. More than 500 artworks and new sculptures have been installed...It´s not a revolution, it´s a renaissance of the Hotel Biron!', said Catherine Chevillot, the director of the museum.

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