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Torsos and More Torsos

There are two pieces in the photograph that accompanies our recent NEWS post, to the left. They have similar titles: Study for the Torso of the Walking Man and Large Torso of the Walking Man. The former has a truncated right leg (the leg ends before the top of the knee). The other has two hips, minimally indicated, with nothing below. This is one of the complications of studying Rodin. Often the same or nearly the same titles are given to different pieces. Or a piece would bear its original title but have newly included arms or legs. Or an unchanged piece would be given a different title each time it was included in a new exhibition. Titles aside, these Torsos attest to Rodin’s interest in ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, pieces of which were often excavated as fragments and/or with mineral accretions. The Torsos confirm the artist’s conviction that...

August 19, 2015

Spotlight

First Rodin Exhibition in Hawaii Opens at Honolulu Museum of Art

The Foundation's newest exhibition of Rodin sculpture, Auguste Rodin: The Human Experience, Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections, opened July 22 to members of the Honolulu Museum of Art. More than 150 members attended the early evening reception, their opportunity to view the much-anticipated show before it opened to the general public. The Museum, which looks equally to Asia as well as to the Americas and Europe in its collections, programming, and visitors, provides a unique opportunity to highlight Rodin's popularity in Japan both during and after his lifetime. Plus the Museum has a cast of one of the artist's earliest pieces, The Age of Bronze, as well as sculpture by students of Rodin and other artists influenced by him. On opening day the Museum presented Foundation Director and Exhibition Curator Judith Sobol live for ten minutes on its Periscope; she spoke about the exhibition and fielded questions in...

August 18, 2015

News

Health Care Comes to Rodin Sculpture

The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation actively lends its wonderful collection of Rodin sculpture to museums all over the world. We do this with the assurance that our museum partners take very good care of our sculptures. Yet with the passage of time and with the rigors of crating/ uncrating/crating again -- no matter how careful -- bronze sculpture periodically needs some TLC from the docs -- er, conservators -- who know just what to do to keep the artworks healthy both in fact and in appearance. Thus every few years we bring in our team of conservators to check all the Rodins and to perform as-needed 'healthcare.' This happened most recently in October at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, on the occasion of the then-impending opening of our new traveling show. Here's a look at our consultant conservators hard at work. [gallery columns="2" ids="1995,2001,1997,2000"]...

July 2, 2015

News

Over $5 Million Raised: NewYork-Presbyterian Honors Iris Cantor for Her Visionary Support for Improved Health Care for Women

Iris Cantor’s long-standing commitment to NewYork-Presbyterian, and particularly to the unique health-care needs of women, was celebrated by the venerable hospital at its annual Gala in April. More than 1300 people participated in the event, which also honored Carmen and John Thain. The Gala featured a special concert by Kelly Clarkson, who performed some of her biggest hits. Internationally-lauded for her commitment to improving health care for women, Mrs. Cantor created the hospital’s Iris Cantor Women’s Health Center in 2002. Today it is one of the most comprehensive medical facilities for women in the world, having served more than 200,000 women (and men) since its founding. According to Center Director Orly Etinger, M.D., it demonstrates daily Mrs. Cantor’s inspiration for the Center: Convenience is an incentive to good health. Today, the Cantor model for clinical care for women is widely admired and emulated. And even copied close to home: in 2011 Iris...

July 2, 2015

News

Cantor Foundation Exhibitions Booked through 2017

Busy schedules await the Foundation's two traveling exhibitions of works by Auguste Rodin, which can be seen together until June 14 at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown Pennsylvania. When this combined show closes this summer at the Michener it will separate into two thematic shows that will travel through 2017. The Honolulu Museum of Art is the first stop for a 32-piece exhibition that features Rodin bronzes of various subjects by the French master. The show is titled Rodin: The Human Experience, Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections. It opens to the public on July 23 and marks the first exhibition of Rodin's bronzes in Hawaii. From here it goes to the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas, opening in March 2016. The final stop in 2016 will be the Joel & Lila Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond in Virginia. It opens...

July 2, 2015

News

Edward Steichen’s “Portrait of Rodin”

In the late Nineteenth Century there was a schism in photography: There were those who used it as a documentary tool and there were those who used it to make “art.” Rodin worked for many years with photographers and used their documentary photographs as a means to literally and figuratively “stand back” from his work in order to consider it from a physical and psychological distance. The archives of the Musée Rodin are filled with such photographs, often emended by Rodin with penciled indications of changes to make in the sculpture. Edward Steichen, a young American photographer, greatly admired Rodin. In the years 1900-1902 he visited the French sculptor and made a number of manipulated photographs that are memorable for their atmospheric effects and relation to Symbolist painting. This portrait of Rodin is as much a picture of how the sculptor looked as it is of the sculptor’s mind deeply in...

April 27, 2015

Spotlight

Busy Schedule of Rodin Traveling Exhibitions To Continue

Busy schedules await the Foundation's two traveling exhibitions of works by Auguste Rodin, which can be seen together until June 14 at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown Pennsylvania. When this combined show closes this summer at the Michener it will separate into two thematic shows that are committed through 2017. The first stop for a 32-piece exhibition that features bronzes of all kinds by the French master and is titled Rodin: The Human Experience, Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collections, is the Honolulu Museum of Art, where it opens in July 2015. This will be the first exhibition of Rodin's bronzes in Hawaii. From here it goes to the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas, opening in March 2016. The final stop in 2016 will be the Joel & Lila Harnett Museum of Art at the University of Richmond in Virginia. It opens here in August...

April 27, 2015

News

Maquette for the Monument to General Lynch

Rodin received a number of commissions for portraits to commemorate the public lives of admired and important men. From Balzac and Hugo, Claude and Bastien-Lepage, to monuments to Whistler and Lynch, the sculptor saw these major commissions as opportunities to innovate. General Patricio Lynch Solo de Zaldivar (1824-1886) was a Chilean hero of the War of the Pacific between Chile and Peru (1879-1883). The monument was commissioned by his son-in-law, a Chilean diplomat. Rodin’s maquette (sculpted sketch) reveals his intention to create an equestrian monument to rival those already revered by history: Donatello’s Gattamelata and Verrochio’s Colleoni, as well as the Marcus Aurelius in Rome and Bernini’s Louis XIV in Versailles. It is the horse that gives Rodin’s piece its life. The spirited pose, intended for atop a rectangular pedestal, conveys the dynamic military leader Lynch in a way the maquette of the figure alone itself does not. In the end, the Monument to...

March 25, 2015

Spotlight

Six Hundred Attend Michener Art Museum Members Reception for “Rodin: The Human Experience”

[caption id="attachment_1842" align="alignleft" width="178"] The Michener Art Museum the evening of the Members Reception for "Rodin: The Human Experience"[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1843" align="alignright" width="178"] Michener Museum members admire Rodin's 1892 "Nude Study of Balzac (Type C)"[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1844" align="aligncenter" width="178"] At the Member Reception, Cantor Executive Director and Curator Judith Sobol (l), Michner Director & CEO Lisa Tremper Hanover, and Director of the Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania Lynn Marsden-Atlass (r)[/caption] On February 28 the Foundation's acclaimed new exhibition of sculpture by Auguste Rodin opened at the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The members' opening reception, on a snowy Friday evening, was attended by 600 people who celebrated the selection of 52 works, all from the Cantor collections. The exhibition at the Michener is augmented by a superb small show of sculpture and drawings by contemporary American artists, many of whom are represented in the Museum's collection or on loan from...

March 25, 2015

News

Foundation Newly Presents More Ways To Learn about Rodin

We are always looking for new ways to introduce people to the work of August Rodin. And we've just come up with three more! Now Rodin lovers may download the Foundation's award-winning film, Rodin: The Gates of Hell directly from Amazon....

February 11, 2015

News

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