In a letter addressed to City hall of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, those responsible for the Rodin Museum in Paris have informed the Santa Cruz de Tenerife City Council today of their resignation to the future installation of this cultural space in the capital of Tenerife. As a consequence of this announcement, the mayor of the city, José Manuel Bermúdez, has at the same time given instructions so that the administrative file in this regard is immediately paralyzed.
The Rodin Museum in Santa Cruz de Tenerife was going to be located in a part of the Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park, whose rehabilitation works will begin this year. Bermúdez has lamented “the loss of this opportunity for the capital” and has announced that “this news does not paralyze the City Council’s investment policy in the recovery of local heritage and culture.”
The rectors of the French Museum have today sent a letter to the mayor of the capital himself in which they highlight “the cultural and heritage values” of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, but show their “sensitivity” to the “statements of a part of the sector cultural, academic or political (…) that attack our Museum, which is a public establishment of the French Ministry of Culture, and the very work of Auguste Rodin, of which we are trustees and beneficiaries”.
The mayor has indicated that “the culture and historical heritage of the capital must be axes of socioeconomic development, of generation of opportunities” and for this reason “we want to initiate a process of dialogue with cultural, social and economic agents to agree on future uses of the Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park, since the space destined for the future Rodin Museum in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, approximately half, will not be occupied by this project”.
“Santa Cruz – Bermúdez recalled – is making the greatest investment effort in terms of Historical Heritage in its history and no one is going to stop it”, while highlighting that “there are more than 30 million euros that, in addition to from the recovery of the Viera and Clavijo, they will allow the recovery of the Palacio de Carta, whose works are close to completion in its first phase; the Masonic Temple, with the works already started; the academies building, in Ireneo González, for which there is already a project, or the Marqués de Villasegura building, which also has a project and which will allow the recovery of a space for training in our capital, among many other projects” .
For their part, those responsible for the Parisian cultural space, who for more than 20 years have carried out important work in Spain, in numerous capitals throughout the country, lament that “the current questioning of Rodin as a universal artist, the questioning of originality of his works and the questioning of the motivations of a national public institution like ours have led to this inevitable decision that we regret”, for which the Rodin Museum invites, finally, “to a local reflection, beyond ideologies, for the make the culture shared by all a collective success”.
Bermúdez describes as “a pity” that Santa Cruz cannot share cultural projects with the French museum and many other world-class ones that also show works by Rodin, and indicates that the opposition in the City Council “is not up to what the city and the municipality need to plan their future” and adds that “they continually try to boycott, one after another, projects for the city”.
“In fact – concludes José Manuel Bermúdez – they have achieved it with this cultural project of the first order, as they did with the closure of CIDEMAT or with the eradication of the Ansina program, for the elderly” and concludes by arguing that “as they tried, luckily without success, with the resurfacing plan, the construction of new playgrounds and the increase in items to help families in need”.
