alt Hacker NewsThe Rodin Museum's bronzes are not even "the originals", which makes this whole thing amusing.
The originals created by Rodin were clay models, from which plaster molds were made. Those were used to cast bronzes. Not just one bronze copy, many copies. There are at least 23 copies of "The Thinker" cast during Rodin's lifetime, and even more later copies.[1]
In the SF Bay Area, the Palace of the Legion of Honor has one. One of the point clouds shown is of Rodin's "Gates of Hell", and a copy of that can be seen outside the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford, which has a small garden of Rodin bronzes. So if you really need a 3D scan, there are lots of bronzes available to scan.
What scares the Rodin Museum is that they are still selling reproductions.[2] Resin copies are available through the gift shop, and bronze copies can be ordered. They have a complicated argument about "moral rights" to justify their monopoly which is marginal at this late date. (Rodin died in 1917.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Thinker_sculptures
[2] https://boutique.musee-rodin.fr/en/10-sculpture-reproduction...
Replies
Speaking of Rodin bronzes, if you ever get a chance, check out the Auguste Rodin Gallery at the Maryhill Museum of Art [0]. The museum is located in a beautiful setting on the sides of the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state basically in the middle of nowhere. If the weather is nice, the views of Mount Hood in Oregon are fabulous. The bronze casting process is explained and demonstrated in the gallery. As I recall, there are more than ten steps involving negative and positive impressions before you get to the final work of art. How this fabulous art collection ended up in such a remote location is also an interesting story.
Several of the sculptures the museum scanned were plaster casts, including La Porte de l'Enfer and Les Trois Ombres. Given the destruction and reproduction inherent in the way Rodin's studio and foundry partners were producing bronzes at the time, the plasters are the most accurate, highest quality versions of the works, and are the closest to the hand of the artist. The molds used for the production of bronzes would have been made (and remade after they wore out) from the plasters. Accurate scans of the plasters are, arguably, therefore of much higher archival and commercial value than any scan of a subsequent bronze cast would be.
> What scares the Rodin Museum is that they are still selling reproductions.
No, what scares them is the idea that someone else might view their artwork without visiting their museum. Revenue from the gift shop doesn't enter into it at all.
The French law considers the first 12 bronze productions of a clay cast as an original.
Article R. 122-3 of the Code de la propriété intellectuelle