Rodin Museum Selective Selling Works Forced To Wash Warehouse Due To Pandemic

The Thinker, one of Rodin's statues (Avery Evans / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - The Rodin Museum in Paris plans to clear warehouses or sell more replicas of sculptures by famous French sculptors in the near future. This was done as a strategy to survive in the midst of financial losses due to COVID-19.

Quoting The Washington Post, Museum Director Catherine Chevillot revealed that this year alone, her party has sold a replica of a bronze statue by the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin for 1.4 million euros, or nearly the equivalent of Rp23 billion.

Although now the museum has been allowed to reopen, the Rodin Museum, which is not funded by the government, remains in trouble. In fact, there are many messages on the walls of the museum room that they are looking for donations.

According to reports, the museum has experienced a budget shortfall of 3.4 million euros. To expedite the agenda, the museum will change the rules for selling bronze statues to make it more massive but regular. Such calculations are said to be important to keep funding safe in the following years.

Previously, the museum had a system and regulations that only sold a maximum of 30 works per year. That rule has lasted for a century. Now, they plan to increase their sales quota to 120.

“Our challenge is not to sell more, but more regularly. Because, several years ago we had sold as much as 6 to 9 million euros in the form of a statue. The museum has now doubled the number of works allowed to be produced, from 30 to 120. We are also pursuing new partnerships, including one with the Gagosian Gallery in the US, "said Chevillot.

Noted, this museum has sold a total of five thousand works of art over the last hundred years. The majority of buyers also mostly come from Europe and the US. Unfortunately, sales in the area began to decline. In the future, the museum plans to market its artwork to Asian and Latin American countries to get new clients.