Rodin Museum to Launch in China

After more than eight years of preparation, Paris’s Musée Rodin will open its first international branch, the Centre d’Art Rodin, in Shanghai this September, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and France. Backed by China’s State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the French Ministry of Culture, and private funding spearheaded by French-Chinese collector Wu Jing, the new museum will debut with an exhibition of approximately 50 sculptures by 19th-century French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), renowned for his naturalistic and expressive bronze and marble figures.

The Centre d’Art Rodin will occupy the building designed by French architect Jacques Ferrier as the French Pavilion during Expo 2010, located in the Pudong New Area. This bustling waterfront district on the eastern bank of the Huangpu River lies directly opposite the West Bund Cultural Corridor, home to prominent private cultural institutions such as the Long Museum, TANK Shanghai, and Start Museum.

The inaugural exhibition, “Rodin: The Inheritance of Modern Sculpture,” will feature plaster renditions of Rodin’s famous works The Thinker (1904) and The Age of Bronze (1877), as well as bronze editions of The Kiss (1882) and The Walking Man (1907). Scheduled to run for two years, the exhibition will also present works by Rodin’s mentor, Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, as well as his protégés, Aristide Maillol and Antoine Bourdelle. The opening display will additionally showcase Rodin’s lesser-known collection of Chinese art, including a Guanyin statue, Tang dynasty terracotta figures, and porcelain from the Ming and Qing dynasties, which will be publicly exhibited for the first time.

The announcement of the Centre d’Art Rodin’s opening follows a five-year hiatus. In October 2019, during a Sino-French cultural forum in Nice, the Musée Rodin announced its plans to open a Shanghai branch within “two to three years,” with an agreement to sell 50 and loan an additional 50 works to the new institution. The Musée Rodin had initially planned to launch the project in Shenzhen, in Guangdong province north of Hong Kong, due to its robust cultural infrastructure and ethnic diversity. In a statement to the South China Morning Post, Centre d’Art Rodin’s artistic director Kong Xianhe explained that Shanghai was selected for its cultural significance, vibrant art scene, and promising prospects for economic and urban growth.

The launch of the Centre d’Art Rodin underscores a recent strategic initiative to solidify cultural relations between China and France, which sees both nations leveraging the arts as a conduit for diplomatic engagement, to reinforce their political alliances on the global stage. This effort is already evidenced by the renewed multi-year partnership between the West Bund Art Museum and the Centre Pompidou to facilitate artwork loans and professional training, as well as a recent agreement between luxury fashion house Chanel and Shanghai’s Power Station of Art to fund renovations at the state-run museum and host joint exhibitions.

Recognized as France’s only fully self-funded national museum, the Musée Rodin, founded in 1919, houses the collection of Auguste Rodin donated to the French state, including his sculptures, drawings, and works by his contemporaries. With two sites in central Paris and suburban Meudon, the institution receives around 700,000 visitors annually.

Mioie Kwok is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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