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- Project lead: Laure de Margerie, director, French sculpture census.
- Partners : Musée Rodin, Nasher Sculpture Center, Texas University in Dallas, l’Institut national d’histoire de l’art, the Musée d’Orsay, the École du Louvre and the Musée Rodin in Paris
- Start date : 2009
- Typology : External collections/Outreach of Rodin's work
Since the late nineteenth century, Rodin’s work has been disseminated worldwide through exhibitions and acquisitions. Today, his work is internationally recognised and features in many prestigious collections worldwide, testifying to its value and universal appeal.
French sculpture has occupied a special place in the United States since the eighteenth century and now, for the first time, a census of French sculpture (1500-1960) in American public collections has revealed the extent and quality of these works. The census, in the form of a bilingual (English-French) database, presents a great many works scattered around the United States and held in a wide variety of places including museums, historic houses, government buildings, corporate collections and public spaces. It also sheds light on the history of taste in art, the construction of museum collections, the art trade and how the sculptures arrived in the United States from France.
The census is addressed to the widest possible audience: museum professionals, researchers, historians, collectors, art dealers, French sculpture enthusiasts and anyone who would like to know more about it. It currently features some 12,120 sculptures but is constantly expanding, with the final number of works estimated at 15 or 20,000. In addition to full-text search, it is possible to explore the database by artist, title, place of conservation or material.
The French Sculpture Census is a comprehensive catalogue of French sculptures (dating from 1500 to 1960) in American public collections. The project, initiated and managed by Laure de Margerie, is funded by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art, the Musée d'Orsay, the École du Louvre and the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the Richard Lounsbery Foundation, and two anonymous American donors.
Thanks to the project’s partnership with the Musée Rodin, the researcher Lara Cavallo was able to spend several years on an in-depth study. The titles of the sculptures were standardized and the bibliography was supplemented with reference works published by the Musée Rodin, notably The Bronzes of Rodin (Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, assisted by Hélène Marraud and Diane Tytgat, 2007). Finally, meticulous research in the Musée Rodin’s archives yielded further information on the history of the bronzes, the caster’s name, the date of casting, the date of purchase, etc., thereby considerably adding to the knowledge of Rodin’s sculptures in American public collections and ensuring their accessibility to a wider audience.
