The Rodin goes to the hospital project, supported by the Margency Children’s Hospital (HEM) bulding of the French Red Cross, in partnership with the Rodin Museum and visual artist Caroline Desnoëttes, is part of the regional program “Culture at the Hospital 2017” within the “Culture and Health” measures.

• It is financially supported by DRAC and ARS Île-de-France and the association “On a Bed of Colours”
• The molding workshop of the RMN lent for 3 months to the HEM the casts of the tactile gallery of the Rodin exhibition of the Grand Palais.
• The Rodin Museum lent a mold of The Thinker for 3 months to HEM
72 chlidren created nearly an hundred art pieces thtat will be exhibited at the Rodin museum on October 30th and from Décember 5th till December 10th 2017
Link: http://www.musee-rodin.fr/fr/ressources/projets-et-restitutions/rodin-va-lhopital-editions/rodin-va-lhopital-hopital-de-margency
Many thanks to:
• Agnes Buzyn, Health & solidarities Minister
• Françoise Nyssen, Minister of Cutlture
• Jean-Jacques Eledjam, President of the French Red Crss
• Fatima Oudghiri, Director of the children hospital of Margency (HEM), French Red Cross
• Brigitte Dessutter, Director of the Social-Educational service of the HEM
• Catherine Chevillot, Director of Rodin Museum
• Eva Bouillo, in charge of the public service for disabled persons of the Rodin Museum
• Mehdi Idir, Territorial advisor at the DRAC of Île de France
• Laetitia Mailho, Director of the Arts et Santé, La Manufacture Association, Coordination of the Health & Culture service for the ARS in IDS
• Fabrice Gaboriau et Jérôme Manoukian for their photographs of the Rodin Museum

“By initiating the Rodin & I project, I wanted to share with the children of the HEM the unique work of Auguste Rodin, endowed with a vital force and an active power that awakens, enlightens and strengthens the person looking. The aspiring artists have seized and nourished them, they knew how to summon their sensitivity, reflection, imagination and creativity. They knead the material, modeled and played with the colors as well as objects related to their daily care to reveal their own vision of the moving body, fragmented or assembled. Convinced that the Rodin Museum and the HEM are in their own way two temples of emotions, the opening to the world of art and the workshops could only be beneficial for young patients. The Rodin & I exhibition illustrates this with astonishing sculptures and drawings that leave no one indifferent.”
Caroline Desnoëttes
Visual artist

“Looking at the work done by the children of Margency Hospital, I was struck by the double movement that takes place there : each young person shows a stupendous capacity to go straight to what, in the work of Rodin, joins in the most acute of his experience of the suffering body; and, appropriating the sculptor’s art, multiplies the expression by associating modeled element and medical material. For this reason, the ephemeral presentation of these creations in the halls of the Museum, alongside the mythical sculptures of Rodin, was deeply moving. One image that struck me personally was this : in a room with walls covered with pieces of ancient bodies, Rodin’s Walking Man is placed in the center : without a head, without arms, he vigorously camps the movement and the energy of walking. Beside, on a perfusion stand, were hung like a Christmas tree medical objects, prostheses, shoes, in the middle of which a clay figure opposed at once its fragility and tenacity. A forbidden but claimed march ; impossible but reinvented ; inaccessible but recreated. Incredible lesson of hope that moves us.”
Catherine Chevillot
Director of the Rodin Museum
General Curator of Heritage

« Congratulations for the wonderful work you have done. I know well how the hospital environment can sometimes lead to loose one's bearings. Art helps to stay in Life. Thank you.»
Agnès Buzyn
Ministrer of Solidarites and Health

« Here, beauty and goodness come together. Here everyone says what he wants, what he sees. Space of creation, space of freedom. We share the conviction that the time of hospitalization must not be cut off from the world and that culture must be everywhere »
Professeur Jean-Jacques Eledjam
President of the French Red Cross