home      about      artists     exhibitions      press      contact      purchase

 artist                                                                                          return     

AUGUSTE RODIN
D'Airain Collection
Media on the MacLaren Art Centre, Canada

RODIN: TRULY A BUST

The exhibit of the French sculptor's works is an undertaking of such dubious scholarship and poor planning that the Royal Ontario Museum should be deeply embarrassed, writes SARAH MILROY

Toronto Globe, Saturday, September 22, 2001 - Print Edition, Page R15
By SARAH MILROY

TORONTO -- When all of the clamour has died away, the Royal Ontario Museum's current exhibition From Plaster to Bronze: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin is likely to be remembered as the most frustrating exhibition to be mounted in Canada this year. It will certainly be the most controversial.
First, it is controversial because of its source: a company named Gruppo Mondiale, based in Italy, that assembled the collection of plasters and bronzes and sold them to a group of Canadian collectors. These collectors, in turn, plan to donate the works to the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont. In addition to being the source for the majority of the plasters (which the organizers claim are casts dating from Rodin's lifetime), Gruppo Mondiale is also the fabricator of 11 of the Rodin bronzes that appear in the show, also destined for Barrie. These are dated 1999-2000, and are exhibited here in defiance of the Paris-based Musée Rodin's attempt to put a hammerhold on reproduction.

Second, From Plaster to Bronze will be remembered for its many ambiguities. Claiming to illuminate the process that Rodin (1840-1917) used to develop his sculptures from their birth in the artistic imagination to the finished products in bronze and marble, the exhibition, in fact, could leave even experienced museum goers woefully addled about the distinctions between the very different objects on display.

Plasters from the deeply distressed to the pristine, from the mechanically made to those modified by the hand of Rodin in the studio, are given the same star treatment. Earlier bronzes made under the guidance of the Musée Rodin are placed side by side with Gruppo Mondiale bronzes made last year, and all are bathed in the same sacral glow of museum lighting.

Those searching for satisfying explanations from the exhibition's wall labels and didactic panels will find little to go on. Information ranges from the hopelessly terse to the downright fudgy. The wall label for the plaster Hand of God reads simply, "Attributed to Auguste Rodin, Date not Known." And what, exactly, is a "plaster (partial figure), studio or foundry cast, 1898 version"? Numerous plasters are indeterminately labelled in this way, as "studio or foundry plasters," though the distinction is critical. One, arguably, is a work of art, and the other is not.

Wall texts further confuse the issue, making statements like: "The inherent versatility of plaster. . . led Rodin to consider these versions of his sculpture to be the truest, most original, and direct manifestation of his ideas." This statement, however, could only be conceivably applied to those works which stayed in Rodin's studio, where he often remodelled them. But the lion's share of the plasters are, by the organizers' own assertion, foundry plasters, the byproducts of industry.

Even the borrowed works, whose provenances are documented, are suspended in an informational vacuum. The Edmonton Art Gallery's cast of The Age of Bronze is a case in point. What does the date, 1876, signify? The date of the original artistic conception? The date of the cast? Was a cast sanctioned by the Musée Rodin prior to making its way to Canada? Who donated the piece to the Edmonton Art Gallery? When? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

Rodin cast his first version of this sculpture in 1876. Ironically, its first exposure to the public in 1877 was marked by scandal; Rodin was accused of casting it from a live model. The mid-sized variation exhibited here was gifted by Westburne International Industries to the EAG in 1978, and was cast by the Musée Rodin in 1970. It bears their stamp on the underside. (I had to phone the gallery to find out.) But the label here offers no such information, the exhibition has no catalogue to which one can turn, and MacLaren curators Mary Reid and Colin Wiginton gamely struggled at a press conference earlier this week to provide definitive answers. It seems the MacLaren has not had the time or resources to gather full information on these objects.

But wait. Isn't that the research museums are entrusted and funded to do?

To a certain degree, as the ROM and the MacLaren have pointed out, confusion would be inevitable in any exhibition foregrounding Rodin's working methods; the byproduct, perhaps, of Rodin's lust for replication. In 1981, the U.S. critic and theoretician Rosalind Krauss wrote that Rodin participated "in the transformation of his own work into kitsch," referring to his zeal to disseminate his work, to clone it in a variety of sizes and materials, and to reassemble or break up his sculptural compositions, depending on the appetite of his clients. He even arranged, in his will, for the proliferation of his works in limited edition after his death under the imprimatur of the Musée Rodin. As Krauss writes, echoing the phrase of Walter Benjamin, Rodin works from "a position deep in the ethos of mechanical reproduction," notwithstanding his popular incarnation as the "form giver, creator, crucible of originality." (At his behest, for example, 319 versions of The Kiss were made between the years of 1898 and 1918 alone.) More than his unconventionally loose handling of the body, more than his modernist championing of form over subject, more than his oo-la-la eroticism, Rodin's main claim to art-history fame may turn out to be the way he plumbs the late-19th century dialectic between the human hand and the industrial machine.

Who can grasp the complexity of this cyclone of invention? The deeper you dig into Rodin, the further into a hall of mirrors you find yourself, and that's not even taking into account the innumerable opportunities for forgery that such rampant productivity made possible. But while Rodin had every right to complicate the issue to his heart's content, the museum of the 21st century does not. Our job is to untangle and clarify. To mount an authoritative exhibition to deal with such a complex subject would be daunting for even the most experienced Rodin scholar. But to do so without seasoned expertise, and without the full collaboration of the Musée Rodin, which remains the epicentre of Rodin scholarship, is, arguably, lunacy.

William Moore, director of the MacLaren Art Centre, seems not to have missed a lot of sleep when he agreed to receive these donations. In his decision to go forward with the project, however, he has broken ranks with colleagues to whom he might have turned for counsel, among them Bernard Barryte of the Cantor Art Centre at Stanford University in California, one of the largest Rodin holdings in the United States. Barryte, in the assumption of scholarly fraternity, agreed to lend two small works to this show. But this week he confirmed that his institution has been approached over the past several years by donors who are offering works from the Gruppo Mondiale holdings, and that he has consistently declined the gifts. Moore's enthusiasm for what he describes as "bringing art to the people" -- an echo of the MacLaren's motto "people to art" -- seems to have drowned out the warning bells that would have been audible to a more cautious ear.

Instead to going to the leading experts, Moore entrusted the process of authentication and condition reporting, he says, to a U.S. independent curator, David Schaff. The MacLaren and the ROM are anxious to describe Schaff as a Rodin expert, but a search for his record of publications reveals scattered papers on everything from medievalism to architectural history. His only published writing on Rodin appears to be a catalogue prepared for a 1998 exhibition in Venice of part of this same group of plasters, at that time still owned by Gruppo Mondiale.

It is Schaff's name that is signed at the bottom of the handful of "declaration of authentication" forms released to the press this week. Yet in a telephone interview on Thursday, Schaff stated that he was merely hired as a consultant on the plasters, and that provenance (the all-important history of ownership by which a work's authenticity can be defended) was investigated by Moore. He was surprised to hear himself described as "curator" of the show and a "noted Rodin scholar" in the press materials for the show. "That," Schaff said, "would be a bit of an exaggeration," adding that were he to have had control of the show, he would likely have narrowed the selection of plasters, jettisoning some of the most damaged ones, and eliminated the 1999-2000 bronze casts. These exclusions, he said, would be "about the condition of quality."

So how does all this affect the museumgoer? Does it make a difference to how the work looks? It would seem that it does. Quality here is a problem. Visitors who are anticipating the articulated musculature and sense of pent-up physicality and sensuality for which Rodin is justly famous may be, in many cases, disappointed. In plaster cast after plaster cast, the forms are blunted and abraded, sometimes as if dipped in a coating which has congealed over their surfaces, leaving the shapes generalized -- which indeed may be the case, depending on what, precisely, the casts were made for. Some of them are scratched and dinged or badly softened. In many instances, they are coated with sepia or caramel-coloured amber staining, presumably the residue of the casting process. Like elegant courtesans surprised in their shopworn housecoats, a number of them have a morning-after feel, striking the viewer as awkwardly déshabillé. Nothing is learned by looking at these plasters about the nature of Rodin's gift; in fact, his gift has arguably been obscured. All one can see is the purported physical evidence of standard 19th-century foundry casting techniques, hardly the stuff that epiphanies are made of.

Looking at the bronzes, one develops a different set of worries. The two 1999-2000 castings of The Age of Bronze made by the Gruppo Mondiale, for example, don't show the sculptor to best advantage. They seem strikingly generalized compared to the earlier Edmonton Art Gallery version beside which they stand. The wrists are thicker and less defined, ribs have melted away, fingers are swollen, the musculature seems less closely observed. As one would feel looking at photographs of photographs, one senses the ever so subtle loss of texture and detail. Or not so subtle, like the gargantuan 1999-2000 Thinker in bronze which has for weeks graced the lobby of the ROM, a bloated and disfigured monster of a thing that leaves one fantasizing about pigeon target-practice but not much else.

It is clear that Rodin scholarship is sufficiently convoluted to furrow even the most experienced brow into a replica of the great Thinker himself.

Moore and the ROM's CEO, William Thorsell, cannot be faulted for not knowing everything there is to know about Rodin; but they should be savvy enough to know what they don't know. Why was the project processed hastily through the ROM's Cultural Innovations consulting division, instead of working its way slowly through the customary curatorial channels, where the many complexities of the subject could have been given due consideration and real answers could have been sought?

A museum is entrusted to prepare, through its holdings, a record of the past, to be the ultimate disinterested judge on issues of authenticity, to safeguard and protect the rights of the artist, and to stage a faithful and dignified representation of the artist's work during his lifetime, and in perpetuity. If a museum fails in this regard, it runs the risk of becoming a platform co-opted for commercial ends, a place where goods intended for donation can accrue the benediction of the museum without the scrutiny of in-depth scholarship to support the claim.

The international community understands these standards of museum practice. We must insist on them here at home. From Plaster to Bronze: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin runs until Dec. 23 at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Author's note as of 28 May 2003: 

The following two articles have been on the Web since 18 months now, as part of a larger report (altogether ca. 180 pages) on the Toronto exhibition "Plaster to Bronze" and the related Symposium on the question of originality in Rodin's work, in November 2001.

Today, I was informed by a spokesman of the Gruppo Mondiale Est (the original collector of the plasters shown in Toronto) that the Musée Rodin in its recent communication with other institutions would refer to my essays to question the quality of the discussed plaster items, the exhibition "Plaster to Bronze" and the competence of Canadian Museum staff. 

The Rodin-Web is an independent, academic platform. The articles published in this web folder were researched in order to establish the most elementary information on a series of art objects, that already were in the center of an international cultural controversy, although simple, basic documentation on the names of their pre-owners, their age of creation and their physical state in comparison to other reference plasters was neither available to the invited Symposium speakers nor to the larger public. 

I deleted most of my original text - containing extensive chapters on the significance of foundry plasters, on the role of damage in Rodin´s work, on the posthumous casting practice of the Musée Rodin, on economic aspects of Rodin sculptures, on the communication between the Musée Rodin and the Canadians, on the disastrous lack of information, among others - from the Internet as early as January 2002; I saw no reason to dedicate so much web space to a discussion to which none of the parties materially involved (the MacLaren Art Centre, the Canadian donors, the Gruppo Mondiale, the Musée Rodin and various institutional experts) was willing to contribute an articulate, written analysis at all. 

The inability of public institutions to initiate and maintain a proper academic dialogue is stunning and embarrassing. I am quite surprised to hear today that the remaining chapters of my report now seem to play a role in the ongoing "debate" again.

Although the MacLaren Art Center has not published any written materials yet to sustain the quality of their collection in a scholarly way, I have been informed that various high-ranking Rodin experts have recently formulated a positive opinion on these sculptures. But none of these appraisals has been available for review or publication till now - the donation still being under review of the Canadian authorities.

I agree with the Gruppo Mondiale that the precise age of the plasters only is of limited significance with regard to their morphological quality. Talking of shape, it is irrelevant if a plaster copy was drawn from the mould 20, 50, 70 or 100 years ago - except for aspects of patination from the air, damages that happen in the course of time, etc. It could even be argued with good reason that "shape" is the only property that really matters for a foundry plaster, that is, for an object that was created for translation into other materials, like bronze. Obviously, the Musée Rodin is of the same opinion: For the production of posthumous casts, fresh foundry plasters are drawn from the bon creux moulds in Meudon. The Gruppo Mondiale now claims that for many important Rodin works, the Musée Rodin even does not possess such bon creux moulds (negative forms) at all - which means that some newly produced foundry plasters would be reproduced from existing plaster positive forms. This would be a most interesting issue to settle in the course of further research. 

Still I maintain that the provenance and age of the MacLaren plasters is a topic that should be researched, documented and published with urgency - especially when a public Museum claims to display the world´s largest collection of "original", "lifetime" or "early" Rodin plasters outside Meudon and tax deductions amounting to 50 Million Can $ should be granted in order to facilitate its donation. My report on these questions has been the first publication worldwide that has attempted to analyze the relevant categories and initiate a dialogue with the exhibition curators, in order to collect basic facts on quality, provenance and age of individual plaster items.

My offer still holds: Any person or institution that wants to contribute his (or her) information or opinion to the current debate is invited to submit his text proposal to the Rodin-Web and have it published here. In the meantime, the Rodin-Web team will set forth its own  morphological research programme, to document the precise shape of original Rodin plasters in various Museum collections in an objective, exact way.

Hans de Roos

Gallery faces closure over bronzes

MacLaren in dispute over title to 510 Rodin sculptures in multimillion-dollar deal

JAMES ADAMS
Wednesday, March 10, 2004

A multimillion-dollar deal to bring hundreds of bronze sculptures attributed to the French master Auguste Rodin to a small Ontario art gallery has collapsed, with the result that the gallery may be forced to close its doors as early as next month.

The MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont., a city of about 120,000 people, 90 kilometres north of Toronto, was expecting to take possession last year of 510 Rodin bronzes, purportedly worth more than $135-million, from an Italian-based art company, Gruppo Mondiale.

Some of these bronzes would then have been sold to collectors and institutions, with Gruppo and the MacLaren sharing in the proceeds; others would have stayed in Barrie as a linchpin to something called ArtCity, an ambitious project, first conceived in the mid-eighties, to place sculpture by Canadian and international artists in and around Barrie, thereby turning the locale into a tourist destination the equal of Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

While the MacLaren claims to have clear title to the bronzes, all supposedly cast from 1999 onwards, it has yet to see the 10 editions made from each of the 51 Rodins, including such classics as Eternal Spring and The Age of Bronze. Negotiations between the MacLaren and Gruppo Mondiale to get the bronzes to Barrie have been ongoing for more than two years, but reached an impasse recently.

Indeed, there are concerns if all 510 bronzes actually exist as bronzing experts say it takes anywhere from 3½ months to six months to make one finished, professionally acceptable bronze, depending on the size and complexity of the object being cast.

In the meantime, the MacLaren says its reputation has been "tarnished" in the last five months by reports in the Barrie media and from a local alderman questioning how it -- an institution less than 20 years old with an operating budget last year of just over $3.3-million and visitors numbering no more than 65,000 -- obtained title to bronzes by Rodin (1840-1917), one of the most famous sculptors in Western art. The MacLaren has held off defending itself from the innuendo until now because, in the words of board chair Rodney Burns, "we didn't want to jeopardize our negotiations with Gruppo."

Now that those negotiations have ended acrimoniously and legal action may be a possibility, the MacLaren wants "to clear our name among our stakeholders," beginning this week, and start to raise funds again since at least 80 per cent of its annual budget has come from donations of various kinds, rather than government grants.

It's not the first time the MacLaren has courted controversy with sculptures attributed by Rodin. In 2001, it took possession of more than 35 Rodin plasters from Gruppo Mondiale, and another 17 plasters in 2002 from a London-based intermediary of Gruppo Mondiale. The majority of the 2001 plasters, along with several bronzes, were shown at a controversial exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto in fall, 2001, an exhibition whose authenticity was hotly contested by the Musée Rodin in Paris, the legal heir to the sculptor's legacy.

The MacLaren has been under renewed stress in recent weeks. In late January it accepted the resignation of its veteran director, William Moore, one of the main architects of the Rodin deal. More recently, it's laid off five permanent staff; reduced its hours of public operation to five days from six; reported a deficit for calendar year 2003 of $1-million; and failed, for the first time in three years, to make a payment to the city of Barrie on the $2.7-million left on a $4.1-million promissory note the city provided for a building project completed in late 2001.

The MacLaren is hoping it can assemble some sort of rescue package in the next few weeks. Without it, the gallery could shut it doors by mid-April, according to Hanne Fynbo, the gallery's acting director.

The innuendo now swirling around the MacLaren has centred on a complex series of financial transactions conducted a couple of years ago, involving organizations and individuals in Canada, the United States, Italy, Great Britain and Lichtenstein -- all ostensibly designed to get Barrie its Rodins while offering as many as 5,000 Canadian investors breaks on their income tax.

Part of the transactions story was brought to light last year by David Aspden, a former Barrie police officer who is now a Barrie alderman for the ward in which the MacLaren is located, as well as chair of the city's police services board and its director of culture and recreation funding. (The MacLaren currently receives about $53,000 yearly, or about 1.5 per cent of its budget, as a civic grant.) What intrigued Aspden were the 2001 and 2002 tax statements filed by the Toronto-based Ideas Canada Foundation, a non-profit private charity established in 2000 to provide grants to "qualified donees such as universities, art galleries, performing arts centres, museums, etc." In those years, Ideas reported to Canada Customs and Revenue that it made "gifts" totalling more than $140-million to the MacLaren. Indeed, for 2002, of the almost $75.8-million Ideas "gifted" to five cultural organizations, the MacLaren is credited with receiving 99 per cent of that total. (The Toronto Symphony, by contrast, received $20,000; the Vancouver Art Gallery $10,000). The MacLaren acknowledges that the money was directed largely for the purpose of buying the Rodin bronzes from Gruppo Mondiale, but this week its chairman Burns claimed that "those millions have never been in a MacLaren bank account." In fact, "the funds have gone to art dealers, manufacturers, lawyers and accountants, not us. And that always was the intention."

According to informed sources, Ideas Canada drew $141.8-million (and placed in a Toronto law firm's escrow account) from a pool of about $162-million supplied by Nova Scotia's Berkshires Funding Initiatives Ltd. Twenty per cent of this pool -- approximately $32.4 million -- was provided in cash by several thousand investors seeking relief on their income tax by making donations to a registered charity. The remaining 80 per cent -- roughly $129.6-million -- came from these same investors, but through a 25-year, non-interest bearing loan from Talisker Funding Ltd. Of the $162-million pool, Berkshires kept a 12 per cent commission of about $19.4-million.

The $141.8-million in Canadian funds were subsequently converted to $109-million (U.S.) and given to an art dealer in Britain, Jerry Jennings Art Consultants. (Jennings is a former Torontonian who managed Gallery Moos in the city and was a senior associate with Ritchie's Auctioneers and Appraisers). In late 2000, the U.K. art dealer forwarded the $109-million to a U.S. dealer, Joan Krawczyk Fine Arts Inc. of New York, who bought the 510 bronzes from Gruppo Mondiale for $6-million (U.S.). Titles for the bronzes were then given to the U.K. dealer who, in turn, sent the titles to the MacLaren.

MacLaren officials say they have fulfilled their parts of the deal, and want the bronzes. Gruppo Mondiale, however, argues that the deal is not completed; in fact, in a letter sent to the MacLaren last week, Gruppo Mondiale's principal Jon Gary Snell says his firm was to be "remunerated tens of millions of dollars." Snell's litigation lawyer, Thomas Curry of Toronto, said yesterday that "no one's complied with what they've promised . . . The elements of the transaction that Gruppo entered into and that the MacLaren had with different parties are all up for grabs."

From: <RVHorth1@...>
Date: Wed Feb 19, 2003  10:07 pm
Subject: Gruppo Mondiale Bronzes

Mr. DeRoos,

I have been through your site every day for the past two months, and read just about all of the information that you have compiled in regards to Rodin, and first of all, let me compliment the work you have put in to this project.

On to my query... As an expert on Rodin, or as one who would best be in a position to offer an objective view of Rodin and the validity of posthumous castings, could you please offer me your view of the Gruppo Mondiale plasters and subsequent bronzes? As a consumer what might be the appeal? As a scholar what might be the validity and the drawing power of such a collection?

I have read about the controversy that this collection of plasters and bronzes has caused, some of which parallels the journeys of the Cantor collection through the annals of scholarly debate. Is there a solution? Can these sculptures be justified on all fronts?

I ask of you any or all information which may help in this query. And please accept my thanks in advance for your assistance, and for the excellent scholarship you have endeavored.

Best Regards,
Reed Van Horth
 RVHorth1@msn.com

From: "Contact Rodin-Web" <contact@...>
Date: Thu Feb 20, 2003  10:48 pm
Subject: Reed van Horth and questions about Gruppo Mondiale Est

Dear Mr Van Horth,  dear Rodin-Web Network members,

I refer to the questions posted by Mr Van Horth in the Rodin-Web Network, concerning the Rodin plasters collected by Gruppo Mondiale Est, now being donated to the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Canada.

Dear Mr Van Horth, 

Thank you for your interest in the Rodin-Web and your kind words about my research (see Rodin-Web messages as of yesterday and as of 5 February 2003).

I am not sure, however, how I could help you from this point on. Most of what I have found out about the Gruppo Mondiale plaster collection has been published in my essays already, which are accessible though the Rodin-Web. Beyond the questions raised in these articles and the tentative answers given, I cannot contribute much more to the current debate, I am afraid.

By now, it is public and undisputed knowledge that this cache of plasters has its origin in the settlement of the Rudier Foundry and was acquired by the Gruppo Mondiale from various sources by the end of the 1990´s. Most of the plasters admittedly are foundry duplicates, some of them seem to be genuine studio, exhibition or presentation plasters directly drawn from the bon creux moulds. Most of the plasters, as far as I can judge, are in a fine condition. A few look damaged and battered, or show traces of the casting process. Presumably, most of them are from Rodin´s lifetime or shortly after, if we follow the arguments formulated by Dr. David Schaff, whose reasoning seems to be valid and based on genuine connoisseurship. Some of them may have been produced as late as the 1950´s, again according to David Schaff.

Only few of these plasters may have been created by Rodin with his own hands, when any. This especially disturbs your Florida countryman and fellow-gallerist Mr Gary Garseneau, who has put up a campaign to discard these items together with all posthumous casts as "fakes". For the Musée Rodin in Paris, these plasters seem to be a nuisance as well. The correspondence between Paris and the Canadian Museums that organized the "Plaster to Bronze" exhibition in Toronto shows a shocking lack of  precise analysis/critique of the questioned items. By now, official appraisal reports have been written, that have not been published yet. For more specific questions, I must refer to the MacLaren Art Center in Barrie.

For some collectors and art lovers, the morphological likeness to accepted, authorized Rodin plasters in Paris, Meudon, San Francisco etc. may be the decisive criterion for judging these plasters, and the posthumous bronze casts derived from them. A modern bronze cast produced from an undamaged plaster with good craftmanship will have the same physical appearance as a Rudier cast - as a matter of fact, all bronze casts are "just" multiples. But as you know for sure, for many other art collectors, the age and provenance of the item, its historical singularity or rarity, its immaterial aura or the formal approval by the Musée Rodin will weigh as much when they make a purchase decision; that is why lifetime or pre-war bronze casts sell at a significant premium, compared to newer posthumous bronzes. Compared to bronze casts issued by the Musée Rodin, the Gruppo Mondiale casts certainly are more affordable. If such a cast will make a good long-term economical investment I cannot judge.

I noticed you own a gallery and art consultancy firm "Collection Privée" with outlets in Palm Beach, South Beach and Tampa, Florida, specializing in painting and sculpture.  Among others, you offer a total art investment concept for both private and corporate collectors, starting with a minimum of $100,000 for collectors who want to build a total tax deductible art concept. In this function, you understand certainly more than I do about the tax incentives that may have supported the building of the Cantor collection and the donation of the Gruppo Mondiale plasters by a group of wealthy Canadian businessmen, and other art market mechanisms that help build - and destroy - prices.

On your Website http://www.collectionprivee.com, you promise your clients that you offer only authentic and original works. As Rodin-Web publisher,  I can supply you with some analysis and factual information, but as an art dealer and consultant, you must back up your promise with your own reasoned opinion, which I cannot replace. I will neither advice you or your clients to purchase plasters or bronzes offered by the Gruppo Mondiale Est, nor discourage you to do so. Still I hope my dialogue with the MacLaren Art Centre and the Toronto symposium participants, as published on my Website, will help you to come to well-informed conclusions.

With my best regards
Hans de Roos
Publisher Rodin-Web.org
Munich

http://rodinweb.com/report_rom/2_7_18.htm

H. de Roos - The critique of the toronto exhibition

6. The absence of a catalogue would impair an evaluation of the plasters (18)
An Intended Suppression Of The Facts?

In the light of these efforts, the accusation of deception, as put forward by Jacques Vilain and Gary Arseneau, seems to be unjustified. Whether 2/3 or even 3/4 of the donated collection actually consists of lifetime plasters, as David Schaff claims, or less, will remain open to academic debate and for certain items, a difference of opinion may persist. Deception, on the other hand, assumes a willful distortion of the truth, an intended suppression of the facts.

Although the exhibition at the R.O.M. does not expressly engage the visitors in a discourse on the dating question, The Hand of God is duely indicated as a work "after Rodin". In the list of exhibition items supplied by the MacLaren, Rodin´s Hand Holding A Female Torso is listed as a composition by "Paul Cruet or Amadee Berhault", produced 1917: in this point, Arseneau´s critique is not justified and the Maclaren´s inventory list is more accurate than the entry in the Joconde Database supplied by the Musée Rodin. The Idyll of Ixelles (early babies) and Feminine Torso are listed as "attributed to Rodin".

As for the bronzes, Gary Arseneau actually detected an inaccuracy in dating:

The MacLaren Art Centre's "From Plaster to Bronzes: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin" exhibition checklist lists the "Eustache de St. Pierre" with the dates and description: "(1884) 1895 version bronze (lifetime cast)." As I document on page 32 of my symposium presentation, the Vancouver Art Gallery emailed that the foundry for the "Eustache de St. Pierre" was Georges Rudier which went into business in 1952. Also this that their was an "incision on left side at back: Rodin 1964." If the MacLaren Art Centre and their "in my opinion" expert Dr. Schaff can't properly document the date of something so obvious, are we to accept anything the wishful speculate on?

[From: Letter from Gary Arsenerau to the author, 26 Dec. 2001]

Confronted with this critique, Schaff reacted as follows:

As for the bronze cast of the small "Eustache de St Pierre," whose signage I did not oversee, it seems an unfortunate, minor mistake - not a capital crime.

[From: Letter from Dr David Schaff  to the author, 27 Dec. 2001]

 

http://rodinweb.com/frames.htm
http://www.rodin-web.de/report_rom/2_7_07.htm

H. de Roos - Towards a catalog of the Maclaren collection

A discussion with Gary Arseneau and Dr David Schaff (7)
Some Tangible Indications About Individual Plasters

Dr David Schaff, who had the task of determining the authenticity of the plasters for the MacLaren Museum, gave his opinion on the age issue as follows:

The Idyll of Ixelles is a unique (and very repaired) tinted plaster; the Feminine Torso is not catalogued, so we must be cautious with these two. The large Hand of God is definitely after Rodin, not made or authorized by him or by the Musee Rodin.

On the other hand, every other image comes from an approved, documented model. As you know, some of the works are inscribed by Rodin; others clearly came from his studio or from his founders just after 1900. These include all the large and major forms, for which there is further evidence revealed in their recent conservation and in the casting histories.

What is most important is that their are no refabrications (...), nor are there any enlargements (...). Some items may be later - the Eve with round Base at these dimensions was the model for numerous marbles but was not cast until the late 1950's - so it's possible that this plaster, but not the mold, dates from that time.

The small dancers were not cast during Rodin's lifetime (only Dancer A was, in 1915), so these may be either items sent to Rudier for the Browse and Darby casting (1956?) or plasters made by Georges Rudier. 

The casting of the medium Age of Bronze by Alexis Rudier continued into the twenties and beyond, so this item might be marginally beyond Rodin's life even though the consignment of the form to the foundry dates to ca. 1902, like all the other Ages of Bronze.

[From: Letter from David Schaff to the author, 29 Nov. 2001]

For the first time, these were very tangible indications regarding the individual plaster casts.

http://rodin-web.org/collections/major/maclaren.htm
MACLAREN ART CENTRE / ART CITY, BARRIE, ONTARIO
MacLaren Art Cente
37 Mulcaster Street
Barrie, ON Canada L4M 3M2
(North of Toronto)

Tel. 001 - 705 - 721 96 96
Fax 001 - 705 - 739 13 91

As reported by ArtBusiness and ArtFocus, 100 Rodin plasters were donated to this Museum in the little town of Barrie, north of Toronto, Ontario.

A collection of 21 bronzes and 21 original plasters have been donated in April 2001. When the donation process is complete the collection will include another 29 bronzes and 29 plasters. In sum, the donation is claimed to be worth Cdn$ 40 Million. A full size version of the Thinker(1903) is valued at Cdn$ 1.6 Million.

The works have been exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum from Fall 2001 till Spring 2002. This exhibition caused a bitter controversy between the Canadian Museums and the Musée Rodin in Paris, which claimed the plasters - coming from the settlement of the Rudier Foundry - would be foundry duplicates, damaged and mollified by replication processes.

Most of the bronzes in the collection were cast in 1999-2000 and will be part of the ArtCity project. ArtCity is an initiative of the MacLaren and the City of Barrie to promote cultural tourism by placing art in parkland and public spaces, so that the whole town becomes a City of Art. The MacLaren is also looking into building a separate pavillion to house the plasters and some of the smaller bronzes.

The Museum Website informs us that prior to MacLaren's acquisition, only one plaster and less than thirty bronze and marble sculptures by Rodin were known to be open to public view across Canada.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/canadians-lose-appeal-over-damage-to-rodin-sculptures-1.624216
Canadians lose appeal over damage to Rodin sculptures
CBC Arts · Posted: Nov 22, 2006
A group of prominent Canadians will not be reimbursed for damage allegedly done to their collection of disputed Rodin sculptures when a representative of a French museum inspected them, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday.

The court overturned a previous Superior Court ruling giving the group of businessmen $10,000 after an inspectorfrom the Musée Rodin allegedly damaged the works of art during an inspection of their authenticity.

The court upheld the Superior Court decision allowing the inspector's report to go to the France government, despite protestations from the businessmen that he was unqualified.

The 28 plaster sculptures have been at the centre of a long-running fight between the collectors and the Musée Rodin, an institution dedicated to the works of master sculpture Auguste Rodin, known for The Thinker and The Kiss.

The sculptures were purchased from an Italian dealer by a group of businessmen including Rolling Stones tour manager Michael Cohl, pollster Martin Goldfarb and Allan Slaight, executive chairman of Standard Broadcasting. The investors originally intended to donate the sculptures to the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont.

But a dispute between the businessmen and the French government arose soon after when the curator at the Musée Rodin called their legitimacy as genuine artworks into question just before a 2002 exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

"I've had a chance to see these plasters," Musée Rodincurator Antoinette Romaine wrote in a Toronto newspaper in 2001.

"And I was disappointed by what they presented. I consider that they're sorry plasters who, in fact, were just tools for work and not authentic pieces of art."

William Moore, the MacLaren Art Centre director until 2004, defended the exhibition at the time as authentic and said their display waslegitimate.

"We're not saying that they are anything but beautiful foundry plasters, part of the process of Rodin," Moore said.

The French museum, which owns the rights to all of Rodin's works in France, is involved in a wide-ranging investigation into the possibility of alleged fakes of Rodin plasters and bronzes.

The French government sent inspector Gilles Perrault to take photographs, measurements and conduct tests on the surface as part of an effort to determine the authenticity and nature of the sculptures. The collectors allege that during this process, several small pieces fell off some of the sculptures.

The sculptures have been in storage at the MacLaren since the 2004 decision to allow the inspection. The museum said in June it would not be taking the collection into its permanent collection, leaving them in the hands of the individual collectors.

http://www.rodin-web.org/symp/articles/defended.htm
Sculpture exhibit defended after head of Paris Rodin Museum calls it a fraud
Tuesday July 31 5:12 PM EST
By ANDREA BAILLIE

TORONTO (CP) - A Canadian exhibit featuring the work of Auguste Rodin is authentic, says the man behind the project, even though a Paris museum devoted to the famous sculptor has suggested the display is a fraud.

"We have immense documentation supporting (authenticity)," said William Moore, who spent several years trying to obtain the Rodin pieces as director of the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont. Moore defended the exhibit Tuesday after Jacques Vilain, director of the Rodin Museum in Paris, wrote a letter to a Toronto newspaper condemning the pieces, which are to be displayed next month at the Royal Ontario Museum.

"We have always maintained the collection in question cannot be considered authentic," wrote Vilain. "The public must not be misled."

The exhibit, featuring plaster casts by the French sculptor renowned for works like The Thinker and The Kiss, is eventually to be housed at a museum in Barrie.

In his letter, Vilain insisted the collection, which is valued at $40 million and divided between bronzes and plasters, is not authentic because it includes foundry plaster casts, coated with substances that could have softened them.

Other items, he says, are enlargements that were made after Rodin died in 1917.

Responding to Vilain's allegations Tuesday, Moore said foundry plasters are an essential step in Rodin's creative process and added that none of the pieces have degraded to the point where they require significant work.

He also denied the exhibit contains enlargements made after the sculptor's death.

"We've had conservators spend a great deal of time ... just having these things looked at," he said. "There is no significant problem with this.

"All of our presentation ... is within the international standards of the (International Council of Museums)."

Vilain's letter said he has written the Royal Ontario Museum and the MacLaren Art Centre to object "in the strongest possible language (to) the advisability of going ahead with this project."

But William Thorsell, the ROM's president and CEO, said Tuesday he has no concerns about the exhibit.

"The authenticity I think is clear on the plasters," he said, adding that the museum exhibit will delve into issues surrounding what constitutes original sculpture. "We're very interested in the intellectual and artistic issues around the nature of sculpture, how sculpture is done, what is 'an original,' what is a copy, what is a reproduction?" he said.

Much is riding on the project in Barrie, where the Rodin display is part of a larger project called ArtCity that is designed to promote cultural tourism in the area. A group of art patrons has agreed to donate the Rodin sculptures to the newly refurbished MacLaren Art Centre, which is scheduled to open next month. Moore hopes the exhibition will travel around the world to raise money to construct a permanent Rodin Museum in Barrie.
A spokeswoman at the Rodin Museum in Paris said Tuesday that Vilain was on holiday and unavailable for comment.

https://jonimitchell.com/library/print.cfm?id=686
Rodin Thinkers to the Rom: We think not, thank you
Toronto Globe and Mail
October 20, 2001

The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto was hoping to host a big symposium on the French sculptor Auguste Rodin Nov. 6. But with less than three weeks to go, the response of would-be participants is less than overwhelming.

Last month the ROM mailed dozens of letters to Rodin scholars and buffs around the world, inviting them to the Ontario capital to weigh in on the legacy of the sculptor, using its current, controversial exhibition of Rodin plasters from Barrie, Ont.'s MacLaren Art Centre as the hook.

Thus far, only six individuals have reportedly confirmed their attendance. Organizers had hoped representatives of the Muséé Rodin in Paris, the executor of the Rodin estate and the institution that has been the most vociferous in trashing the ROM, would show. But earlier this month Jacques Vilain, director of the Musée, and Antoinette Romain, its curator of sculpture, gave them the big non.

Meanwhile, there are reports that institutions in South Korea, Japan and Vancouver are interested in taking the Rodin show after it closes in December, but so far nothing has been firmed up. One thing these places shouldn't take is the contents of the Rodin gift "shop" at the ROM. It consists largely of clunky plaster reproductions, most made in Mexico, of such Rodin hits as The Thinker ($125 for the small one) and Eternal Spring ($425 for the big one). Even one of the prime movers of the exhibition acknowledged last week that this stuff is "an embarrassment."

But who knows, maybe the MacLaren Art Centre, home of the 60 plasters, will someday make its own reproduction casts. The centre's director, William Moore, says he has no plans for this, but there's pretty much nothing to stop the MacLaren from doing so. Since Rodin died in 1917, there are no copyright concerns and, despite all the bleatings of the Musée Rodin, no impediments in terms of legal or moral rights. Rodins, rain down on us!


https://bluff-rodins.weebly.com/
François-Auguste-René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin (/oʊˈɡuːst roʊˈdæn/ oh-GOOST roh-DAN; French: [oɡyst ʁɔdɛ̃]), was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.

Auguste Rodin died in 1917

For the last 70 odd years after Auguste Rodin's death in 1917, the Musee Rodin owned an exclusive "right of reproduction to objects given by him," which in part and/or whole, fell into the public domain in the late 1980's. Yet, despite Auguste Rodin's 1916 Will mandating the "right of reproduction to objects given by him" upon his death to the State of France, the Musee Rodin has admitted at one time on their website [subsequently removed] and to this scholar [in written correspondence] to violating Auguste Rodin Will by using posthumously reproduced plasters for casting in bronze, rather than his original lifetime plasters, resulting in 2nd-generation-removed bronze forgeries, not reproductions, much less sculptures. The Musee Rodin's fraud is further compounded by their posthumous inscription of non-disclosed counterfeit "A Rodin" signatures and bogus edition numbers to these non-disclosed posthumous 2nd-generation-removed bronze forgeries.

Remember, Auguste Rodin died in 1917. The dead don't posthumously sign, much less edition.

To add insult to injury, these non-disclosed posthumous second-generation-removed bronze forgeries with counterfeit "A. Rodin" signatures in bogus editions have been misrepresented by the Musee Rodin, museums and collectors as original works of visual art ie., sculptures, falsely attributed to Auguste Rodin, creating a false market for huge profiteering through admission fees, city-state-federal grants, corporate sponsorship, outright sales and tax write-offs, while deceptively leading the public that they were in the presence of an original work of art ie., sculpture, much less something Auguste Rodin created, much less approved.

Remember, Auguste Rodin died in 1917. The dead don't sculpt.

So, when Georges Rudier foundry, that cast non-disclosed posthumous second-generation-removed bronze forgeries for the Musee Rodin from 1952 to the late 1980's, went bankrupt, the Gruppo Mondiale and its director Gary Snell snapped up the opportunity to acquire this bankrupt foundry with its' collection of posthumous plaster reproductions, authorized by the Musee Rodin, from Auguste Rodin's original lifetime plasters.

So, instead of a corrupt Musee Rodin having exclusive rights to flood the marketplace with the sale of non-disclosed second-generation-removed bronze forgeries with applied counterfeit "A Rodin" signatures falsely attributed as original works of visual ie., sculpture to a dead Auguste Rodin, others like Gruppo Mondiale could now participate and profit almost indistinguishably from the Musee Rodin's posthumous collection by using the same posthumous plasters, moulds and the like for casting in bronze.

GRUPPO MONDIALE AND PINOCCHIO

Unfortunately, Gruppo Mondiale is very much like The Coachman in the old 1940 Disney classic movie Pinocchio. As you may know, the movie is the story of a wooden puppet named Pinocchio who desperately wants to become a real little boy. In his journey to become human, Pinocchio comes across The Coachman’s hench men Honest John and Gideon who lure him to Pleasure Island to eat whatever he wishes and create havoc all day when the true and sinster purpose is to turn wayward boys into donkeys for sale. (Source: Wikipedia)

GRUPPO MONDIALE EST AND MACLAREN ART CENTRE TO SPLIT $135 MILLION In the Globe and Mail's published March 10, 2004 "Gallery faces closure over bronzes" article by James Adams, The reporter wrote: "A multimillion-dollar deal to bring hundreds of bronze sculptures attributed to the French master Auguste Rodin to a small Ontario art gallery has collapsed, with the result that the gallery may be forced to close its doors as early as next month. The MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie, Ont., a city of about 120,000 people, 90 kilometres north of Toronto, was expecting to take possession last year of 510 Rodin bronzes, purportedly worth more than $135-million, from an Italian-based art company, Gruppo Mondiale. Some of these bronzes would then have been sold to collectors and institutions, with Gruppo and the MacLaren sharing in the proceeds; others would have stayed in Barrie as a linchpin to something called ArtCity, an ambitious project, first conceived in the mid-eighties, to place sculpture by Canadian and international artists in and around Barrie, thereby turning the locale into a tourist destination the equal of Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake."

510 RODINS NEVER DELIVERED BY GRUPPO MONDIALE EST Additionally, the James Adams wrote: "While the MacLaren claims to have clear title to the bronzes, all supposedly cast from 1999 onwards, it has yet to see the 10 editions made from each of the 51 Rodins, including such classics as Eternal Spring and The Age of Bronze. Negotiations between the MacLaren and Gruppo Mondiale to get the bronzes to Barrie have been ongoing for more than two years, but reached an impasse recently. Indeed, there are concerns if all 510 bronzes actually exist as bronzing experts say it takes anywhere from 31⁄2 months to six months to make one finished, professionally acceptable bronze, depending on the size and complexity of the object being cast."

MACLAREN ART CENTRE GOES BANKRUPT In Globe and Mail's published June 14, 2005 "Deal lacked proper checks, report says" article by James Adams, the reporter wrote: "The 16-page report, more than a year in the making, was ordered by Barrie's city council last April. Councillors in the city, with a population of about 130,000, created the six-member Rodin Transaction Examination Committee upon learning that the MacLaren Art Centre was facing a deficit of at least $1-million and unable to make any payments on the $2.7-million it owed the city for an expansion and renovation of its space."

ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM GAINS $200,000 IN UNPAID BILLS As for the Royal Ontario Museum, their initial financial stake that turned into a loss was addressed in a Globe and Mail published January 18, 2003 "Inside the hidden kingdom" article by Sarah Milroy, the reporter wrote: " last year's Rodin fiasco (which ended up costing the ROM more than $200,000 in unpaid bills when the MacLaren Art Centre's proposed world tour of the exhibit found no other takers)."

$40 MILLION DONATION TAX WRITEOFF In the Globe and Mail's published November 5, 2006 "Canadian collectors cry foul on report" article by James Adams, the reporter wrote: "At stake is the fate of versions of some of the world's most famous sculptures, among them three plaster renditions of The Kiss, two of The Thinker and three of the Age of Bronze, part of a collection that the 10 businessmen bought from an Italian dealer in 2000. By donating their 28 plasters to the MacLaren, a registered Canadian charity, they would have been able to claim their full market value as a break against taxable income. At one time, the MacLaren valued the entire Rodin project at more than $40-million."

WHO ARE THESE BUSINESSMEN? Additionally, in this Globe and Mail published article, the reporter James Adams names those ten businessmen. They are: 1) Rolling Stones' tour manager Michael Cohl, 2) broadcasting billionaire Allan Slaight, 3) Toronto investment banker Robert Foster, 4) pollster Martin Goldfarb, 5) developers Garnet Watchorn and 6) Graham Goodchild, 7) Standard Broadcasting CFO David Coriat, 8) venture capitalist Anthony Lloyd, 9) Mad Catz Interactive founder Pat Brigham and 10) the estate of the late John M. S. Lecky, Calgary-based founder of Canada 3000 airlines.
GRUPPO MONDIALE EST. PARTNERS WITH RODIN INTERNATIONAL Rodin International L.C., located at 201 Bird Road in Coral Gables, Florida, began selling Gruppo Mondiale Est.'s so-called Rodins sometime after 2002.

On their rodininternational.com/Posthumous.html website, it stated: "These are only three examples of major sculptors with posthumous bronzes, but the list could be continued endlessly. The essence of this is that posthumous casts are an essential part of our understanding of the artist’s lifetime work. They complete the image and character of the artist, and sometimes formulate it altogether. These works are significant additions to their respective collections and are visited by millions of visitors annually. At recent auctions some posthumous bronzes have actually sold at much higher prices than lifetime casts."

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/72078/Controversial-Rodin-Plaster-Bronze-Exhibit-to-Open-Today
Controversial Rodin Plaster, Bronze Exhibit to Open Today
September 20, 2001
TORONTO -- The firestorm over an exhibit, entitled "From Plaster to Bronze: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin" which opens here Thursday, continues to simmer between the Rodin Museum in Paris and exhibitors here.
The exhibit, opening at the Royal Ontario Museum and organized by the Barrie, Ontario-based Maclaren Art Center, will put on display 40 plaster and 30 bronze casts, including some which were created after the artist's death in 1917.

The artistic spat erupted months ago when the Rodin Museum, which has overseen Rodin's work bequeathed to the French government, publicly called into question the authenticity of the casts.

In an August letter to the Toronto ****Star**** newspaper -- one of the sponsors of the exhibit -- Rodin Museum Director Jacques Vilain said: "The collection in question cannot be considered authentic."

Maclaren Art Center Director William Moore counters the works' history of ownership -- or provenance -- is "clear" and that Rodin Museum officials "have been aware of that for a long time."

Rodin Museum officials say the exhibitors should disclose the provenance.

On Tuesday, Moore provided AFP with several declarations of authentication, dated August 28, 2001, for some of the casts.

It appeared that most of the casts had a clear provenance, except for one unnamed private collector.

The Paris-based museum, which is charged with protecting the interests of Rodin's estate, also says the casts should not be exhibited because they are of poor quality and in no part reflect Rodin's creative vision.

Moore, while saying he "deeply respects" the museum, disputes these claims saying the exhibit really "moves back to that sense of originality and original thinking."

"Rodin would create a clay model which was his first conceptual component; then he would move from clay into the plaster. The plaster was made from a mold of the clay because the clay would eventually fall apart.

"Then he would rework the plasters often in a number of forms. those plasters were as close you could get to the original sense of Rodin because he wasn't involved particularly in the making of the bronzes, which were made by highly specialized bronzes," Moore said.

The exhibit will run until December 23 and then travel to the United States and Asia. Tickets for which cost upwards of 20 dollars (13 dollars us).

https://www.muskokaregion.com/news/maclarens-reputation-damaged-by-rodin-scheme-says-report/article_9ae82235-acf0-544b-a25d-ec106d0aba57.html
MacLaren’s reputation damaged by Rodin scheme, says report
By Laurie Watt Huntsville Forester
Wednesday, June 15, 2005

The MacLaren Art Centre came out a bit ahead financially in the failed Rodin bronzes transaction, but it cost the gallery much more in terms of its reputation, focus and ability to raise funds, city council heard Monday night.

In April 2004, city council threw the gallery a $750,000 lifeline. At the same time, it required the gallery to open its books to a city committee, chaired by longtime banker Stewart McBoyle, and discuss a tax-assisted investment scheme that was to have resulted in long-term financial stability for the gallery through the sale of special-edition Rodin bronzes.

The transaction failed, with the gallery never being able to secure the bronzes. Efforts to obtain the bronzes not only drove up the centre’s legal bills, but created a cloud of uncertainty, which frustrated the gallery’s fund-raising efforts and distracted gallery staff from running exhibitions, said McBoyle, who conducted 26 interviews with gallery staff, UK and American art dealers and an art manufacturer, transporter and curator in Italy.

Names were kept confidential, he said, as the committee faced a threat of being sued and many people interviewed over the past year demanded confidentiality. He noted there have been “at least 25” drafts of his report.

“The MacLaren has in its possession title documents to 510 bronzes. It would seem some type of recovery action should be taken to get the bronzes,” McBoyle told the media, adding the gallery can’t afford to, because it’s in “a financial strait jacket.

“From what we have examined, we could not find anything other than internal issues of governance, nothing that could be considered criminal in nature. The MacLaren needs to have a proper business plan and relook at the vision it had when it first undertook the Art City project,” he said, adding it’s unlikely the centre will be able to carry through on its vision to have buildings and pavilions for art in public spaces throughout the city.

Mayor Rob Hamilton said although the gallery came out ahead - as it acquired a Henry Moore collection (valued at $35 million) and received 17 Rodin plasters, and $1.2 million for its building fund - gallery officials focused their attention on obtaining the bronzes at the expense of the gallery’s mission and other fund-raising efforts.

“They didn’t tend to their knitting. They didn’t focus on their other fund-raising,” the mayor said, after listening to McBoyle’s 16-page presentation.

Of the $1.2 million the gallery received, $709,159 went to reducing the building loan held by the city. The remainder went into operating budgets. “It got sucked up,” said Hamilton.

MacLaren board chairperson Jim Fairhead said the board has already begun to implement several recommendations from the report.

“We have already started our strategic planning process and will ensure that the report’s recommendations are reflected in the official plan, which will be available to the public in September,” he said.

“Despite the challenges of the Rodin Transaction, the report identifies there were tangible benefits for the MAC. While we did not achieve the financial sustainability we had hoped for, our collection and capital campaign both benefited.”

The report also stated that MacLaren’s former director had “greater leeway than might be expected and less than perfect communication with the board.”

Former director William Moore could not be reached for comment as The Advance went to press.

https://www.simcoe.com/news/barries-maclaren-can-put-rodin-story-behind-it-lawyer/article_f6f98187-dae9-57be-b577-e8be52c8f690.html
By Laurie Watt Barrie Advance
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
 An Ontario Superior Court judge has ushered the MacLaren’s Walking Man lawsuit to the door.

Ontario Superior Court of Justice Guy DiTomaso ruled last week a $1.55-million lawsuit relating to damages to the Auguste Rodin plaster and two other pieces came too late to go to trial.

“This is very good for the gallery. It will put the Rodin experience behind it,” said the gallery’s lawyer, Arnold Schwisberg.

Ontario Superior Court of Justice Guy DiTomaso ruled last week a $1.55-million lawsuit relating to damages to the Auguste Rodin plaster and two other pieces came too late to go to trial.

“This is very good for the gallery. It will put the Rodin experience behind it,” said the gallery’s lawyer, Arnold Schwisberg.

The Rodin story goes back to 2001. The gallery had hoped to receive international recognition and acclaim with its Rodin exhibition. The exhibition lost money, a long-term funding plan involving Rodin works failed and Walking Man, with its lawsuit and its costs, kept the wound open.

DiTomaso brought it all to an end, saying one of the pieces’ owners, a Calgary litigator who is also an avid art collector, should have known the Limitations Act and made his damages claim by Oct. 19, 2009.

The statement of claim was filed Nov. 19, 2009, then later amended in 2010. The case was heard in Barrie April 3 and July 26.

DiTomaso told owner Grant Vogeli to “take immediate steps” to take back Walking Man, which the gallery has been paying to store since it exhibited it in the fall of 2001. The gallery estimates that cost at $8,522.55, plus interest.

“Sadly, Walking Man is the subject of what in the art world is known as a failed ‘art flip’ for tax purposes,” DiTomaso said. “It has become the rejected gift that keeps on giving.

Ontario Superior Court of Justice Guy DiTomaso ruled last week a $1.55-million lawsuit relating to damages to the Auguste Rodin plaster and two other pieces came too late to go to trial.

“This is very good for the gallery. It will put the Rodin experience behind it,” said the gallery’s lawyer, Arnold Schwisberg.

The Rodin story goes back to 2001. The gallery had hoped to receive international recognition and acclaim with its Rodin exhibition. The exhibition lost money, a long-term funding plan involving Rodin works failed and Walking Man, with its lawsuit and its costs, kept the wound open.

DiTomaso brought it all to an end, saying one of the pieces’ owners, a Calgary litigator who is also an avid art collector, should have known the Limitations Act and made his damages claim by Oct. 19, 2009.

The statement of claim was filed Nov. 19, 2009, then later amended in 2010. The case was heard in Barrie April 3 and July 26.

DiTomaso told owner Grant Vogeli to “take immediate steps” to take back Walking Man, which the gallery has been paying to store since it exhibited it in the fall of 2001. The gallery estimates that cost at $8,522.55, plus interest.

“Sadly, Walking Man is the subject of what in the art world is known as a failed ‘art flip’ for tax purposes,” DiTomaso said. “It has become the rejected gift that keeps on giving.

“To complicate matters, our Waking Man is a controversial figure. Some claim it is a genuine work attributed to the famous French sculptor Auguste Rodin and is of considerable value. Others dispute its authenticity and provenance, which is a polite way of saying our Walking Man is a cheap, valueless fake.

“This controversy takes on a greater significance when one considers Walking Man’s current deteriorated and damaged condition. One thing agreed upon is that is damaged beyond repair.”

The question of authenticity begins with the purchase of Walking Man in 1998. A group including Vogeli purchased the piece for US$62,500.

The Vogeli group provided no receipt or authenticity certificate, not even a cancelled cheque, to prove they purchased the piece they later claimed was worth $450,000.

The group lent six plasters, including Walking Man, to the MacLaren for a Rodin show, coinciding with the opening of the new gallery in September 2001.

Because they did so, the owners qualified for an income tax credit for six times what they paid. Later, however, the Canadian Revenue Agency disallowed the credit, while the Musée Rodin initiated an investigation into Walking Man, which required the piece to be impounded and examined in Ottawa.

During the French investigation, which concluded in December, 2004, the piece was damaged.

Because of the failure of the income tax funding plan, which disallowed an array of donations and a plan to sell Rodin pieces, the gallery also experienced financial troubles so severe, it sought protection under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.

While Walking Man was impounded, the MacLaren ended its loan agreement with Vogeli and requested information, such as a shipping address, to return it when it was released. The gallery has been paying storage costs ever since.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2001/oct/02/artsfeatures.arts
I think, but I'm not quite sure who I am
2001
When is a Rodin not a Rodin? And whose decision is it anyway? Aida Edemariam on a show that's split Canada and France

Stop someone in the street and ask them to name two famous statues. Odds are they'll think of Michelangelo's fey David, or Rodin's Thinker - or possibly another Rodin, The Kiss. From Plaster to Bronze: The Sculpture of Auguste Rodin, at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, is a collection comprising 70-odd plasters and bronzes, including The Thinker and The Kiss, that is worth around £17.5m. It has been billed as "The world's largest single collection of plasters outside the Musée Rodin in Paris."

But are they authentic? The Musée Rodin, to which Rodin bequeathed nearly 7,000 plasters when he died in 1917, says not. "It's a scandal, a forgery, a delusion," says curator of statues Antoinette Romain. Museum director Jacques Vilain has told Canadian newspapers that this is the biggest scandal he has ever faced. "I have the support of all France."

Invective has been flying across the Atlantic for weeks, but the issue isn't fakes versus originals. Given that "original" Rodins are cast, what exactly is an authentic Rodin? Who gets to decide? Rodin himself, as much entrepreneur as sculptor, does not make the task any easier. Born in 1840, a stonemason by trade, he didn't develop his emotional, realistic style until he was 35, when he went to Italy and saw the work of Michelangelo, Donatello, Ghiberti. His next piece, The Age of Bronze (L'Age d'Airain), was so realistic that he was accused of having cast it from a living person. Then there was his statue of Balzac, commissioned for the Société des Gens de Lettres. All he had to go on, wrote Kenneth Clark in Civilisation, was that Balzac was short, fat, worked in his dressing gown. People were horrified by the result, and he had to take the Balzac sculpture back.

For most people, there's just one original Thinker, and it's big and bronze. In fact, the first Thinker (Le Penseur) was small, designed to be part of a bronze door Rodin was making for the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. The Gates of Hell, unfinished, was inspired by The Divine Comedy, and The Thinker was a portrait of Dante. Rodin was fascinated by the statue and began playing around with it. The Kiss (Le Baiser) was also part of the Gates of Hell - and there are 319 casts of that, cast between 1898 and 1819.

The figures the public saw were not necessarily touched by Rodin. Small templates, in unpreservable clay, were used to make a mould into which plaster was poured. Rodin distinguished between two levels of plaster. The first from the mould was a finished, original, independent work of art, the form in which he liked to show his work. Visitors could order copies in marble or bronze. For this process, Rodin, and his assistants, used other plasters, known as foundry plasters, not meant for public consumption.

If authenticity is defined as the fewest number of removes from Rodin's hands, then all these forms are authentic, but the first plaster is more authentic than the first bronze, and so on. Matters are further complicated by the fact that authenticity can be conferred by French law, which allows a maximum of 12 original casts. The last "original" large-form bronze Thinker was cast in 1974; any identical Thinker after that date is a reproduction. The Musée Rodin still produces originals, from plasters yet to be cast 12 times.

No one is disputing that the Canadian bronzes are reproductions, cast in 1999 and 2000. No one is disputing that the show - which comes from the MacLaren Art Centre in Ontario, and is to tour the US and Asia - includes foundry plasters. Points of contention are quality, dating and provenance. Director of the MacLaren Centre William Moore is confident that the plasters date from Rodin's lifetime, pointing out that they are signed. Romain says only posthumous plasters were signed - these date from the 1950s, and could have been made from moulds taken from other plasters.

Some plasters are damaged, and the claim is that Rodin would have made sure they were destroyed. Moore counters that these are interesting in themselves, for insights they provide into how Rodin worked, and that the exhibition will provide technical analysis of the casting process. The Musée Rodin says it has all the original plasters except for a few in New York's Met.

Moore provides provenances that trace the plasters back to Rodin via his foundry. The Musée Rodin says it asked for but never received those provenances. Nor does it recognise the expert Moore has enlisted. Moore says he received the museum's approval a year ago. The museum says that it was never granted. Moore accuses the museum of being proprietorial. The museum says it is the custodian of Rodin's image: "We think the public should not be cheated." Both sides have thought about turning to lawyers.

What it all comes down to is value. The public has an instinctive belief in the sanctity of art, in art as holy relic touched by one hand only. And the art market can play on that instinct. The fewer pieces there are, the more you can get for them. The art world lives in horror of such operations as Bronze Direct, where small Thinkers are available for $250. "Want a Rodin's Masterpiece for yourself?" reads the ad. "Come to www.bronzedirect.com.

The matter ultimately returns to the question posed by the Washington Post's chief art critic Blake Gopnik: "Do these things look exactly like objects that Rodin would have recognised as being by him?" The ROM is organising a symposium on November 6. They have invited Rodin scholars from around the world, including representatives from the Musée Rodin - which has not yet accepted the invitation.

https://www.simcoe.com/news/maclaren-faces-1-55m-lawsuit/article_f8897a94-b56d-5d31-b336-25c2154e1306.html
MacLaren faces $1.55M lawsuit
By Barrie Advance
Tuesday, July 13, 2010

BARRIE - The ghost of Auguste Rodin has returned to haunt the MacLaren Art Centre.

The gallery is facing $1.55 million in lawsuits relating to plasters it borrowed to be part of a travelling exhibition.

In three separate statements of claim, the lenders accuse the gallery of negligence and failing to properly ship the artwork – plasters by Auguste Rodin the gallery used as part of a 2001 exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum.

The Rodin exhibition was unprofitable, due primarily to a sudden drop in tourism after 9/11. The event, however, put the small gallery on the international art scene as the sculptures on display included not only plasters, but posthumous bronzes it had commissioned to be a long-term fundraising tool as well as a way of placing sculptures throughout the city, to make Barrie ArtCity – a cultural tourism destination.

The tax-assisted financing idea, however, failed.

The gallery spent time and money, albeit unsuccessfully, to obtain all the work it commissioned and was to sell over 20 years.

In the wake of the ROM exhibition, the gallery began 2002 with a $750,000 operating deficit. The failed Rodin Transaction, as it was known, raised almost $1.3 million, much of which went to pay a $2.9-million building loan from the city.

Cash-strapped, the gallery turned to the City of Barrie for not only increased operating grants, but also to maintain its city-owned building that was renovated and expanded in 2001. In 2004, then executive director William Moore was released from his duties at The MacLaren.

A City of Barrie investigative report in June 2005 cleared the gallery of any impropriety and the city stepped in to help the gallery with loans and increased grants. Since then, the gallery has cut and restructured programs. Its current director Carolyn Bell Farrell came to the gallery in July 2007.

MacLaren’s lawyer Arnold Schwisberg told The Advance the three files are in the process of being consolidated and, once that is complete, he will file a statement of defence.

“The centre shall be filing its single statement of defence in 30 days or less after the consolidation order is made. Until then, it would be inappropriate for me to comment, and I would suggest that any reportage also be deferred,” he said in an email.

“I can, however, indicate the centre believes that the claims do not have the validity or magnitude alleged, and a fully particularized defence shall be pursued accordingly.”

In the first court file, James and Molly Longo are asking for $550,000 for losses relating to the piece entitled 4 Movements of Dance. They claim they requested the gallery return their art in June 2004, and again in the summer of 2007.

They said art consultant and former gallery director Moore, who inspected all three pieces, reported 4 Movements of Dance had been severely damaged. The piece was valued at $525,000. In a similar claim, Dino Deluca and Grant Vogeli say the piece they lent the gallery, Walking Man, is no longer of any value. It was worth $450,000 and, according to the court file, Walking Man had major breaks in both legs and was severely cracked.

In the third civil suit, Celia Martin, Martin Johnson and Geoffrey Goad are asking for $500,000 for losses relating to Medium Eve. They claim when their consultant inspected Medium Eve, valued at $460,000, he reported she had been “severely damaged.”

In all three claims, the plaintiffs allege the gallery did not provide required documents, such as conservation and exhibition history, as well as condition reports, which are filed at each venue.

The suits all claim, in the summer of 2007 the gallery said it would arrange to ship the pieces, once it was paid to do so. However, the loan agreement they signed stipulated the gallery would not only provide safekeeping for the pieces, but it would insure them and return them to the lenders.

                                   artist                               return                                                                                 E-mail: info@hayhillgallery.com