Rodin Exhibition Opens at Dixon Gallery and Gardens
A new exhibition of 49 works by Auguste Rodin and three portraits of him by others opened in October at Memphis’ Dixon Gallery and Gardens. The show is an extraordinary insight into the French artist’s capacity to fill his bronzes with emotion, movement, and multiple meanings, a capacity that transformed sculpture at the beginning of the 20th Century from an art of description to one of evocation.
The Dixon Gallery’s presentation of Rodin: The Human Experience, Selections from the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Collections honors the memory of John Buchanan, who was Director of the Memphis museum in 1988 when it exhibited its first Rodin exhibition. Buchanan, who went on to direct the Portland Art Museum (Oregon) and the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, died in 2012. “We thought that dedicating Rodin: The Human Experience to John would be a way of indicating the debt of gratitude that we owe him,” said the Dixon’s present director, Kevin Sharp. “He was central to the history of the Dixon. His ambition was translated into the Dixon’s ambition.” As a special homage to John, Iris Cantor has loaned the Dixon Gallery a monumental cast of Rodin’s The Three Shades.
“Much to my delight, the Dixon is the first stop on a nine-city tour for the exhibition,” said Cantor Foundation Executive Director Judith Sobol. “It seems the natural place to begin.” The exhibition goes from the Dixon to the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA, and from there on to Honolulu, San Antonio, and Richmond. Other venues are currently being finalized.
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