Paris’s MusÉe Rodin to Inaugurate Shanghai Outpost

TheMusée Rodinin Paris is set to open its first international outpost this September in Shanghai, theSouth China Morning Postreports. TheCentre d’Art Rodinwill occupy the Jacques Ferrier–designed building that was originally built in the city’s waterfront Pudong New Area to house the French pavilion at Expo 2010. Backed by China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the French Ministry of Culture, and private funding from a board helmed by French Chinese art collector Wu Jing, founder of Hangzhou’s Museum of European Art, the museum represents the culmination of ayears-longcollaborative effort and arrives as France and China celebrate sixty years of diplomatic relations.

Devoted to the work of nineteenth-century sculptor Auguste Rodin, known for his naturalistic bronze and marble figures, Musée Rodin is France’s only self-funded museum. The Shanghai outpost will be led by artistic director Kong Xianhe and will enjoy research and curation support from the French institution, with which it will collaborate on exhibition programming.

Some fifty sculptures by Rodin will appear in the Centre d’Art Rodin’s inaugural show, which is titled “Rodin: The Inheritance of Modern Sculpture” and is slated to run for two years. Among the works on view will be plaster editions of The Thinker, 1904, and The Age of Bronze, 1877, and bronze iterations of The Kiss, 1882, and The Walking Man, 1907. Also on view will be work by Rodin disciples Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol as well as that by Rodin’s teacher Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse. Rounding out the exhibition will be Rodin’s collection of Chinese art, which has previously not been displayed in public. Included in the trove are a Guanyin statue, Tang-dynasty terra-cotta figures, and porcelain objects from the Ming and Qing dynasties.