Jules Mastbaum's money built the Rodin Museum, home to the largest collection of Auguste Rodin's work outside Paris and one of the most beautiful small museum buildings in America. The Rodin Museum was built in 1929 with funds donated by film producer Jules Mastbaum, who became obsessed with Rodin's work and assembled a comprehensive collection of bronze casts, plaster models, drawings, and prints before dying in 1926, before the museum was finished. The building by architects Paul Cret and Jacques Gréber is a French Beaux-Arts pavilion set in a formal garden with a reflecting pool.
The Gates of Hell, the monumental bronze door that Rodin spent forty years reworking but never considered finished, stands in the garden before the entrance — the same cast that stood outside the Rodin studio in Paris. The Thinker, cast from Rodin's original, sits on a pedestal before the gates, in the same position it occupied at the Paris studio. Walk through the garden and into the museum; virtually every major work Rodin made is represented here.
The interior galleries contain the original plaster casts from which bronzes were made, showing the rough texture of Rodin's working process. Admission is by donation.