In early April, a surprise activity is coming to the streets of downtown Beijing, when Auguste Rodin's The Thinker is to be put on public display.

At a recent press conference in Beijing, the cultural attachi of the French Embassy said that the display of The Thinker will be the start to a "French Culture Season" in a "China-France Culture Year".

The Thinker is confirmed to be put on display in the China World Trade Center from April 3 to 6, and in Meilin Champagne Town, a residential area in suburban Beijing, from April 7 to 30.

The Thinker or Le Penseur in French was shown in the Beijing Art Gallery as the most prominent work from the "Rodin Art Exhibition" in 1990. This will be its fourth time to China. In 2000, an estate agent bought a sculpture of The Thinker, with a code number, 25-6. This time the sculpture's code is 25-8. According to an explanation by the sponsors, it was not known until the 1990s that Rodin had made more than four moulds; making two sculptures himself from the No.1 mould.

In the1960s, 19 sculptures were made by other moulds but a fifth mould was discovered at a market in 1993 and its validity strongly questioned, but its authenticity was finally recognized by the Rodin Art Gallery.

In order to allow people around the world to enjoy this great work, the French government and the Rodin Art Gallery set a limit of 25 sculptures to be made from the fifth mould. The 25-8 sculpture was made in 1998 from this mould.

In the context of the business center, The Thinker provides a moment for reflection as well as an alternative setting for a work of art.

The sponsor hopes the public display of The Thinker will attract investment for the sculpture to remain here and make a permanent home in Beijing.

Venus with Drawers, another great work from the history of art by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali, will be exhibited in Beijing in the same way this June.

Some critics have said that with the speedy development of the Chinese economy, business men have began to devote more interest in investing in artworks than in other things, and that this resembles the prelude to the economic wave in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s when there was much collecting of European artworks.

(China.org.cn by Chen Lin, March 28, 2003)