The Rodin Museum has an unusual patrimony in the form of the sculptor’s molds and the rights to make new casts up to a cap of 12 editions per mold. The major works are mostly capped out. But there are hundreds of other smaller works, according to Doreen Carvajal in the New York Times:
The sales of newly cast Rodin bronzes are helping to finance a $17.7 million restoration of the Rodin Museum, where cracks in the walls have appeared over the decades and where the oak parquet floors have warped with the weight of sculptures including the marble lovers entwined in “The Kiss.”
It is the first major renovation for the two-story Hôtel Biron, which stands within a seven-acre formal garden in view of the golden dome of Les Invalides. The museum has been closed since January as part of a three-year construction project that is nearing completion, with a public reopening scheduled for Rodin’s birthday, Nov. 12. […]
The museum also has other grand plans: an $11 million restoration of the gardens surrounding the mansion and an $8.8 million renovation at the site of Rodin’s former home in Meudon, outside Paris.
But those ambitions may be constrained by the museum’s unusual income, which will eventually reach its limits.
Museum officials point out that “The Thinker,” “The Burghers of Calais” and “Monument to Balzac” have been cast the maximum allowable number of times, but, they said, four more editions of “The Gates of Hell,” and two of “The Kiss” remain available.
Recasting Rodin’s Life and Work (The New York Times)
