The decision of the Rodin Museum yesterday to give up having a headquarters in Santa Cruz de Tenerife has caused almost more media impact than the municipal announcement itself, a year and a half ago, that the capital would be the headquarters of the first Rodin Museum outside of Paris in Europe .
Yesterday, it was known that the French institution was not willing to have it put into question, much less the work of Auguste Rodin, of which it is the depositary, due to the rejection by the cultural, academic and, above all, all political. And it is that in recent weeks there have been more voices that have criticized the arrival of this museum in the capital than those that have defended it, the latter position in which only the government team has remained, despite the fact that, They assure from the Consistory, that support exists, but they do not dare to speak out for the “campaign” to reject the project.
These critics have spoken of the “bankruptcy” of the Rodin Museum, that “copies” were bought or the high price of the works (16 million), going as far as to describe the operation as “pufo”. The director of the Rodin Museum, Amélie Simier, faced with these qualifications, according to the letter in which she resigns from the chicharrero project, has not wanted the institution to continue being at the center of the controversy, pointing out that “we must conclude that currently there are no the conditions for the city of Santa Cruz de Tenerife to host an international museum project”. Simier, who labels the statements as “lies, or at least misinformed”, concludes that it is best “not to continue”.
An initiative that was announced in October 2021 when the agreement was announced for the French institution to settle in the Viera y Clavijo Park once it had been rehabilitated, even the architect in charge of the project, Fernando Menis, made adjustments to its design with the objective of adapting it to this agreement, now paralyzed.
The mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, traveled to Paris, accompanied by the councilor for Finance, Juan José Martínez, and the councilor for Culture, Gladis de León, together with the vice president of the Cabildo, Enrique Arriaga, who yesterday did not want to rule on the withdrawal of the Museum Rodin to come to Tenerife. After Paris and the city of Philadelphia, Santa Cruz would have been the third capital in the world to host a museum dedicated to the work of the considered father of modern sculpture.
