The Board of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of La Laguna yesterday made public its rejection of the opening project of the future Rodin Santa Cruz Museumsince it understands that “it does not benefit in any way the society of Santa Cruz or Tenerife in general”, assuring that the only beneficiary will be the Rodin Museum in Paris”.
The arguments of Fine Arts for its rejection of a project, he clarifies, on which the faculty has not been consulted, are based on issues such as that the French sculptor “has no connection whatsoever with Tenerife, nor with the Canary Islands, nor even with Spain” , a question before which he shows his “surprise” and “concern” for allocating public funds to the acquisition of works by Rodin.
The faculty qualifies the project as a mere “commercial transaction”, noting that if it had been consulted it would have pointed out that, “regardless of whether the pieces purchased match market prices, their value as sculptural heritage and their cultural interest They are manifestly low. And it is that the Faculty points out that the works to be acquired, classified as “original”, will be made to order, “more than a century after the death of the artist”.
Fine Arts indicates that the museum is completely devoid of tourist and cultural interest for Tenerife”, since it is a “museum dedicated to a nineteenth-century artist, which will not house unique pieces, but serial sculptures, made posthumously and which can be seen in different points of the world, including Paris. For this reason, he points out, it should be undertaken, in any case, by the private initiative.
The faculty defends local artistic quality and criticizes the allocation of resources to the promotion of a 19th century French artist, leaving local production as a subsidiary of the artist, for which reason it asks the City Council to “reconsider”.
Yesterday, the City Council lamented the position of the Faculty of Fine Arts, to then invite its managers and faculty to learn about the project to establish a Rodin Museum in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, “as well as the process of recovering other cultural spaces in the capital, such as the Masonic temple, the Palacio de Carta, the building that houses the academies, in Irineo square, etc. To this end, we have already offered to the Dean of the Faculty to organize a meeting in which to present the project and its reasons, and resolve any questions that may arise during this process”.
Paris
At the same time that this position was known, the Rodin Museum in Paris also made its own public, defending the importance of Santa Cruz hosting the second Rodin Museum created with the support of the Rodin Museum in Paris and the first in Europe (after the Musée Rodin in Paris). Rodin of Philadelphia created in 1929 by Jules Mastbaum). “What convinced the management of the Rodin Museum was the project of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council: to position the city as a reference place for sculpture,” defends the French institution.
The Rodin in Paris alludes to the celebration in 2023 of the 50th anniversary of the I International Street Sculpture Exhibition as the best example of Santa Cruz’s relationship with sculpture. Hence, installing the museum in the Viera y Clavijo is giving “continuity to the sculptural walk of the Rambla”. “The walk will thus allow you to start from Lady Tenerife by Martín Chirino, installed in the square of the architect Sartoris, tour the García Sanabria park and arrive at a place entirely dedicated to sculpture,” says the French institution.
The Parisian museum assures that “it will be a place for the creation and promotion of sculpture, shared between the work of Rodin and the hosting of temporary exhibitions on the one hand, and, on the other, an interpretation space that could be devoted to sculpture and Tenerife artists in the other wing of the building”.
The project for the Rodin Museum in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which is made up of two spaces, is also detailed. In one will be the permanent collections, with 68 original editions in bronze (Monument to Victor Hugo, Aphrodite, La Défense, etc.), which include 10 unpublished themes, never before presented to the public; 29 plasters (including The Kiss and the Gates of Hell), and five marbles from the Musée Rodin collections.
The second space will be the sculpture garden, in the middle of the Viera y Clavijo park, in continuity with the sculpture walk of the Rambla, which will have 15 reproductions of monumental sculptures, based on the molds bequeathed by the artist (El Pensador, Balzac, The Man Who Walks…).
The Rodin Museum concludes by reiterating its support for the City Council’s project, “to turn it into a place with an impeccable museography, open both to the inhabitants of Tenerife and to numerous international tourists”.
