Santa Cruz of Tenerife will host the second Rodin Museum most important in Europe, according to the agreement of intentions signed this Friday by officials of the Island Council and the City Council, who traveled to the main headquarters of this cultural center in Paris.
“This is the first time that a large international museum has been installed in the Canary Islands and for us it means a cultural opportunity and a pole of attraction for visitors,” the mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez, told EFE.
This agreement establishes that in 2022 the City Council and the Rodin Museum will specify the participation of the institutions involved and the deadlines for their execution, as well as the sculptures that will be sent to this new headquarters, some of them original and others, replicas.
The Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park in Santa Cruz de Tenerife will be chosen to gather these works after the rehabilitation of the same is finished, since it is a project adapted to the needs that arise from this agreement.
In addition, this area will include a space for temporary exhibitions that give visibility to local artists and that will serve to promote a future International Center for Modern and Contemporary Sculpture, to turn Tenerife into “the capital of sculpture in Spain”, declared Bermúdez.
“The objective is to increase the island’s cultural offer and contribute not only sun and beach tourism,” said the vice president of the Tenerife Council and Minister of Culture, Enrique Arriaga, who has been proud that this alliance contributes to increasing the number of visitors, about seven million a year.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), considered the father of modern sculpture and one of the best known artists in the world, has an extensive work, with iconic sculptures, such as “The Kiss” (1882) and “The Thinker” (1902) , both located at the headquarters in Paris.
For the director of this museum, Amélie Simier, the signing of this agreement fulfills Rodin’s desire to expand his work abroad, as the author pointed out before his death and after donating his pieces to the French State in 1916.
“The inhabitants of Tenerife, the Canary Islands and the millions of tourists will be able to get closer to Rodin’s work, which will be accessible throughout the world, also for the French who travel to this place”, Simier concluded.
Currently, Rodin owns two spaces outside France dedicated exclusively to his work: the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia (USA) and a wing dedicated to the sculptor in the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum (Japan).
