Two-Day Rodin Symposium, October 4–5, Celebrates Publication Of Major Catalogue At Stanford University's Cantor Arts Center

Stanford, CA, August 15, 2002—The Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University focuses on 19th-century French sculptor Auguste Rodin this fall with a major publication, a free symposium, and the return of The Thinker to the Rodin collection at Stanford. To celebrate the publication of the late Professor Albert Elsen's monumental catalogue of the Center's Rodin collection, the Center is sponsoring a two-day symposium, New Studies on Rodin, October 4–5, 2002. The keynote address by Rodin's most notable biographer, Ruth Butler, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, presents the current state of Rodin studies and Elsen's contribution to them. Twelve other scholars present 20-minute talks on a variety of subjects..

Elsen's catalogue of the Center's Rodin collection was left as a draft at his untimely death in 1995. It includes brief discussions of the formation of the collection and Rodin's studio practice. However, the bulk of the liberally illustrated 662-page volume, completed by Rosalyn Frankel Jamison after Elsen's death, is devoted to detailed entries on each work. Each essay distills a lifetime of concentrated study and demonstrates Elsen's exceptional ability to guide viewers' eyes around a work of art in a way that encourages creative looking.

Finally, the Center's Rodin season will be crowned by the return of The Thinker from its travels to Australia and Singapore as part of the traveling exhibition Rodin: A Magnificent Obsession: Sculpture from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation. The Cantor Arts Center offers the largest collection of outdoor Rodin culpture outside of the Rodin Museum in Paris, plus The Burghers of Calais nearby on campus. Specially installed evening lighting spotlights the bronzes and makes the Rodin Sculpture Garden at the Cantor Arts Center available for viewing at all times. In addition, the Center presents works by Rodin in its south rotunda and an adjoining gallery during regular museum hours.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SYMPOSIUM: New Studies on Rodin

Friday and Saturday, October 4–5
Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building, Stanford University
Free; open to the public; no registration

We gratefully acknowledge the symposium's sponsors: the Robert Mondavi Family Fund, the Mike and Bobbi Wilsey Education Fund, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Foundation.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 4 - 7:30 pm

4 - 4:15 pm, Welcome, Thomas K. Seligman, Director, Cantor Arts Center
4:20 - 5:05 pm, Rodin and Poets:
4:20 - 4:40 pm, Rodin, Victor Hugo, and "The Gates of Hell," Rosalyn Frankel Jamison, independent scholar
4:45 - 5:05 pm, The Poetics of Sculpture: Rodin in the Circle of Mallarmé, Claudine Mitchell, University of Leeds

Questions and Break

5:30 - 6:30 pm, Keynote Address:
Albert Elsen, "The Gates of Hell," and 20th-century Rodin Scholarship, Ruth Butler, Professor of Art History Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Boston (Sponsored by the Mike and Bobbi Wilsey Fund for Education)

Wine and Cheese Reception in the Rodin Sculpture Garden, Cantor Arts Center

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 5, 9 am - 4:30 pm

9 - 9:15 am, Opening Remarks, Bernard Barryte, Chief Curator, Cantor Arts Center
9:15 - 10 am, Rodin and the Past:
9:15 - 9:35 am, Contextualized Vision: Rodin and the Influence of the Past, James Hargrove, University of Pennsylvania
9:40 - 10 am, Les Cathedrales de France: Rodin, Ruskin, and the Gothic, Ronald Bernier, Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University

10 - 10:30 am, Break

10:30 - 11:40 am, Rodin and Other Artists:
10:30 - 10:50 am, Rodin and Puvis de Chavannes, Aimée Brown Price, independent scholar
10:55 - 11:15 am, The Space/Form Continuum: Rodin, Rosso, and Carriere, Jane Becker, independent scholar
11:20 - 11:40 am, Revising Afternoon of a Faun: Rodin, Nijinski, and the Dancing Body, Juliet Bellow, University of Pennsylvania
11:40 am - noon, Discussion

Noon - 1:30 pm, Lunch

1:30 - 4:10 pm, Rodin's Reception: Europe and the USA
1:30 - 1:50 pm, Art, Politics, and Rodin¹s Prague 1902, Nicholas Sawicki, University of Pennsylvania
1:55 - 2:15 pm, Rodin at the Bauhaus, Paul Paret, University of Connecticut
2:15 - 2:30 pm, Discussion
2:30 - 3 pm, Break
3 - 3:20 pm, Rodin' s American Connection: Truman Howe Bartlett (1835–1923) and Paul Wayland Bartlett (1865–1925), Thomas Somma, Mary Washington College Galleries
3:25 - 3:45 pm, Rodin and the Coming of Age of American Art Criticism, Susan Ilene Fort, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
3:50 - 4:10 pm, Private Passions, Public Pursuance: Rodin and His American Collectors , Anna Tahinci, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
Discussion and Conclusion

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------RODIN COLLECTION TOURS

During the weekend of the symposium, docents will add two special tours to the three free tours they offer every week of the museum¹s Rodin's collection, which is on view both outdoors in the Rodin Sculpture Garden and in the museum's south rotunda and adjoining gallery. Tours take one hour. The normal schedule is: Wednesdays, 2 pm; Saturdays, 11:30 am; Sundays, 3 pm. A tour will be added each day on Saturday and Sunday, October 5 and 6 to offer this special schedule:
11:30 am and 12:30 pm on October 5; 11:30 am and 3 pm on October 6. Tours meet in the main museum lobby. No reservation is needed to attend the tours.

The Center will be closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and January 1st, with no tours on those days. The Center will be open all normal hours, with free tours offered on schedule, before and after Thanksgiving day, Christmas day, and New Years day. For groups of 10 or more, call 650-723-3469 to schedule private tours. Cantor Arts Center docents offer five categories of tours, with one or more tours offered nearly every day. All tours are free. For a detailed listing of tours, call 650-723-3469.