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Rodin's 'The Thinker' in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville is being restored at a cost of $74,000. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

‘The Thinker’ spending holidays getting spruced up

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
Rodin's 'The Thinker' in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville is being restored at a cost of $74,000. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville is being restored at a cost of $74,000. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) – He’s not officially enrolled in classes at the University of Louisville, but he is part of campus life, so it’s only fair that the Rodin sculpture The Thinker gets away for the holidays too.

The statue is out for a few weeks being cleaned and restored to a dark brown patina with a hint of green, the university says on its website. Shelley Reisman Paine is performing the work.

The $74,000 restoration is part of the improvements to the oval in front of Grawemeyer Hall, with funding from federal and private sources.

The statue at U of L is the first full-size bronze cast of the work by Rodin, who supervised the casting on Dec. 25, 1903. It has been at U of L since 1949.

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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

Rodin's 'The Thinker' in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville is being restored at a cost of $74,000. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Rodin’s ‘The Thinker’ in front of Grawemeyer Hall at the University of Louisville is being restored at a cost of $74,000. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.