Rodin Museum (Pennsylvania, USA)

The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia is a museum devoted primarily to the sculpture of Auguste Rodin, presented in a purpose-built building and formal garden on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Its holdings grew from the collection assembled by Philadelphia cinema entrepreneur and philanthropist Jules E. Mastbaum, while its present operation forms part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The museum is especially useful for seeing how Rodin moved between finished monuments, smaller studies, fragments, repeated figures, and different sculptural materials.

From Jules Mastbaum’s Collection to a Philadelphia Museum

Jules Mastbaum’s involvement with Rodin began during a visit to Paris in the 1920s. What started with the purchase of a bronze developed rapidly into a focused collection. Mastbaum acquired bronzes from the Musée Rodin and sought drawings, prints, books, letters, and documentary material that could place the sculpture within a broader record of the artist’s work. His intention shifted from displaying sculptures in his cinema properties to establishing a museum where the collection could remain together. ^[Ref-2]

Mastbaum died in 1926 before the museum was completed. His widow, Etta, and their daughters continued the project, and the Rodin Museum opened on November 29, 1929. The collection had been given to the City of Philadelphia, while the Philadelphia Museum of Art later assumed its care and administration. ^[Ref-3]

1. 1924: Mastbaum began acquiring Rodin’s work after visiting the Musée Rodin in Paris.
2. 1926: Mastbaum died before the planned Philadelphia museum could be completed.
3. 1929: The Rodin Museum opened on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
4. 2012–2013: The building, interiors, garden, installation, and selected sculptures underwent a major program of renovation and conservation.

Bronze, Plaster, Marble, and Rodin’s Reused Figures

The museum works particularly well as a study of sculpture because Rodin is represented through more than a sequence of polished bronze monuments. Plasters, marbles, bronzes, fragments, small figures, portraits, and studies reveal stages of experimentation that can disappear when an artist is known mainly through a few familiar monumental works.

This range also helps explain why several apparently independent Rodin sculptures are closely related. He often returned to a figure or body part, changed its scale or orientation, combined it with another form, or separated it from an earlier composition. The museum’s mixture of studies and monuments makes those relationships easier to follow than a display limited to finished works alone.

The Gates of Hell as a Map of Rodin’s Ideas

The Gates of Hell provides one of the clearest points of entry into Rodin’s working process. He received the commission for a set of bronze doors in 1880 for a planned museum in Paris and drew his initial subject from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. The proposed museum was never realized, yet Rodin continued revising the sculpture for almost thirty-seven years. Its crowded surface ultimately contained more than 200 figures rather than following a simple illustrated narrative. ^[Ref-4]

The Philadelphia bronze was cast after Rodin’s death, between 1926 and 1928. Its presence at the museum is therefore useful in two directions: it is a monumental work in its own right, but it can also be read as a source from which Rodin developed or reconsidered separate figures. Looking between the doors and smaller sculptures elsewhere in the museum reveals how one project fed several later compositions.

• Repeated bodies: Figures devised for larger compositions could later appear independently or in altered combinations.
• Changes of scale: A form modeled for one position could be enlarged and treated as a separate sculpture.
• Fragments as finished forms: Rodin did not always require a complete body for a sculpture to carry gesture or emotion.
• Long revision: The Gates of Hell remained an active project for decades, rather than representing a single fixed moment in the artist’s career.

The Thinker Before It Became an Independent Monument

The museum’s Thinker is especially valuable when viewed in relation to The Gates of Hell. Rodin modeled the figure in 1880–1881 for the top of the doors, where the seated man was associated with Dante observing the realm represented below him. Rodin later detached the figure conceptually from the larger composition and exhibited it independently under titles including The Poet and The Thinker. The Philadelphia bronze was cast in 1924. ^[Ref-5]

That history changes the way the sculpture can be read on the museum grounds. Rather than beginning as a generic monument to thought, the figure emerged from a particular narrative and architectural project. Its later independence is an example of Rodin’s broader practice of letting one sculptural idea acquire several settings and meanings.

A Parkway Building Shaped by Rodin’s Home at Meudon

The building and garden were not conceived as neutral containers. Architect Paul Philippe Cret and landscape designer Jacques Gréber developed a setting that connected Philadelphia with the environment around Rodin’s property at Meudon, outside Paris. The formal garden, pool, sculptures, entrance sequence, and compact museum building were designed to work together.

The entrance known as the Meudon Gate makes that connection physical. It reproduces parts of the façade of the late seventeenth-century Château d’Issy, which Rodin had reassembled on his property at Meudon. In Philadelphia, sculptures placed within the gate’s arches echo the arrangement associated with Rodin’s French property. ^[Ref-6]

The garden is therefore part of the museum’s interpretation rather than simply landscaping around the building. Monumental bronzes can be encountered against architecture, planting, open sky, and the long axis toward the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, while smaller works receive the more controlled scale of the interior galleries.

The 2012–2013 Restoration of Building, Garden, and Sculpture

A major renovation addressed the museum as a combined architectural and sculptural site. The exterior was repaired, the interiors were returned toward their original appearance, and the formal garden was renovated and replanted. Conservation work also included major Rodin sculptures; The Gates of Hell and other bronzes were cleaned, with some works receiving renewed patination as part of their treatment.

The project also reconsidered where sculptures belonged within the historical design. The Burghers of Calais returned to its garden location, while works associated with façade niches and the Meudon Gate were placed back within those architectural relationships. The result reinforced the original idea that the visitor should read building, garden, and sculpture together. ^[Ref-7]

Rodin’s Hands and the Sculpture of the Fragment

The museum’s current Rodin’s Hands installation concentrates on an aspect of the collection that explains much about the artist’s method. Scheduled through January 31, 2027, it brings together fifteen bronzes and plasters, including works described by the museum as rare or specific to the Philadelphia collection. The display examines how Rodin reused, reversed, repositioned, and combined sculpted hands rather than treating every hand as a detail made for only one figure. ^[Ref-8]

Several works give this approach a concrete form:

• The Cathedral: Two right hands are brought together as an independent sculpture, shifting attention from a complete figure to the spatial relationship between the hands.
• The Secret: Another pairing of hands changes the interval between palms and fingertips, making gesture itself the subject.
• Two Hands: The Philadelphia bronze relates to a plaster model at the Musée Rodin associated with the hands of Rodin and Rose Beuret.
• The Hand of God: A large hand supports emerging human figures, while the form of the hand connects with gestures used elsewhere in Rodin’s sculpture.
• Hand of Rodin Holding a Torso: A cast of Rodin’s own right hand holds a miniature torso, placing the sculptor’s physical hand beside a fragment of his art.

For students of sculpture, this material makes the museum more than a survey of well-known titles. It provides evidence of how modeling, repetition, fragmentation, enlargement, and recombination operated inside Rodin’s studio practice.

Current Museum and Garden Access

The museum’s visitor policies reflect the needs of a sculpture collection displayed both indoors and outdoors. Food and drink are not permitted in the galleries, visitors should not touch the art, and flash photography is prohibited. Bags worn on the back, oversized bags, large umbrellas, and selfie sticks are also restricted in the galleries.

Photography in the garden has a separate rule for organized groups: advance permission is required for group photography, and the permit covers the garden rather than admission to the museum interior. Visitors arriving by car can look for limited metered spaces along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, North 21st Street, and North 22nd Street, or use the Philadelphia Museum of Art garage near the main museum building.

A Single-Artist Museum Designed as One Ensemble

The Rodin Museum is most informative when the collection is read across scales: a hand beside a full figure, a study beside a monument, and a bronze against the architectural setting created for it. Mastbaum’s focused collecting, Cret and Gréber’s purpose-built environment, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s stewardship allow the site to preserve both major Rodin sculptures and evidence of the processes that produced them.