The dream of the government Santa Cruz of Tenerife to open a museum of replicas of Rodin It’s over before it starts. The capital city council, led by the Canary Islands Coalition, approved on December 19 an expense of 16 million euros to acquire and rent reproductions of the artist’s sculptures. The municipal corporation made the decision behind the back of the island’s cultural sector, which has shown its outright rejection of allocating this amount of money to a museum dedicated to a figure with no ties to Tenerife. Criticism has led to Rodin Museum in Paris to give up the headquarters.
The director of this institution under the French Ministry of Culture, Amélie Simier, has sent a letter to the mayor of the capital, José Manuel Bermúdez (Canary Coalition). In it, she Simier concludes that “currently the conditions do not exist for the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife to host an international museum project.” The reason: criticism of the cost and real quality of the museum’s content. As a consequence, the mayor has been forced to paralyze the file.
The headquarters of the Rodin Museum in Tenerife intended to occupy 60% of the Viera y Clavijo neo-Gothic cultural park, which will be rehabilitated between 2023 and 2025. According to the file of the Museum, now paralyzed, the capital intended to buy 83 sculptures with 16 million euros . To streamline procedures, the capital’s City Council this summer declared the contract for the acquisition of works to equip the museum a Municipal Strategic Project.
An economic study “without rigor”
So far, 3,281 professionals and people linked to art and culture have signed a open letter against the project. “A museum is not a series of reproductions of sculptures. A museum requires a serious museum plan that determines its patrimonial function”, the text begins.
This letter also ensures that the Rodin Museum of Santa Cruz is based on an “exaggerated” and “inrigor” economic feasibility study. In the study, to which this newspaper has had access, the City Council assures that “in an optimistic scenario” the museum would receive 1,089,145 visitors in the fifth year of its opening among staying tourists, cruise passengers, excursionists and local visitors. This data translates into 6 million euros in income.
The figure far exceeds the visitors received by the Rodin Museum in Paris in 2021. According to the activity report consulted by this newsroom, in 2021 the Parisian institution received 251,156 visitors, despite having 33,705 goods including sculptures, paintings and photographs, among others.
“A more realistic and attentive estimate to the sector will have to assume that it will be a non-refundable investment and that the resulting institution will require repeated investments to remain open,” warned the open letter from culture professionals. In it, they stressed that the investment would not contribute to the construction of a “coherent” tourist claim, since “there is no relationship between Santa Cruz de Tenerife and the figure of Rodin.”
The rectors of the Rodin Museum in Paris have branded these criticisms as “uninformed”, arguing that some Spanish cities have been the scene of traveling exhibitions of the French sculptor.
The city government has defended that the museum would allow the capital to face the economic losses derived from the coronavirus crisis. This argument has also been refuted by experts. “The more reproductions and more Rodin museums circulate around the world, the less attractive and value they will be. Santa Cruz deserves something more than the provincial and ignorant gesture of trying to buy its cultural image with a franchise.
Until now, in addition to the Rodin Museum in Paris, the works of the father of modern sculpture are exhibited in a museum of the author in Philadelphia (United States) and in a wing dedicated to the sculptor in the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum, in Japan.
The value of the reproductions of Rodin’s works has also been questioned by professionals in the sector, who have warned that the French museum is immersed in a lawsuit that, if concluded against it, could force the public domain to be made public. molds with which the replicas are made. “If he loses the trial, some sculptures for which the City Council intends to pay 16 million euros could be produced by anyone without paying a license,” the letter explains.
He too Institute of Contemporary Art of the Canary Islands He took a position against the museum. The expense “does not respond to the cultural reality of the Islands, marked by precariousness”, maintains the institution. Also the Board of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of La Laguna He announced that the opening of this museum would “seriously harm the culture of the capital” and would not benefit Tenerife society either.
A “diversionary” maneuver
José Manuel Bermúdez has described the decision of the Paris Museum as “disappointing”, but also as “opportunity”. The mayor, after ignoring the requests of the cultural sector in relation to Rodin’s project, has pointed out in a video that “from now on” a “dialogue with the cultural sector in Santa Cruz de Tenerife” opens. The objective is to try to locate a cultural center in the Viera y Clavijo Cultural Park.
In a statement, the mayor also insisted that the loss “does not paralyze the City Council’s investment policy in the recovery of local heritage and culture”, despite the fact that one of the main criticisms of the cultural sector was the lack of relations between the Rodin and the Islands.
The opposition has celebrated the news. However, he remains on guard in case it is a “diversionary maneuver”. “We celebrate that the cultural sector has been able to stop this pufo and the only thing we regret is that this stoppage was not the result of a rectification by Bermúdez”, pointed out the socialist Patricia Hernández. The spokesperson has also assured that she will request the administrative act that ends the award and, if she does not receive it, they will continue with their plan to challenge the project in court.
The objective is to “remove doubts” about whether it is a “diversionary maneuver” to avoid the legal actions announced by the Socialists or a “real stoppage of the project.” Unidas Podemos has also celebrated that “common sense has won” and that social pressure has paralyzed a “ball”.
