Auguste Rodin’s “Heroic Head of Pierre de Wiessant” overlooks his most famous sculptural work, “The Thinker.” LAURA TORCHIA | DAILY KENT STATER

Credit: DKS Editors

Three years.

Eight cities.

19,319 miles.

900,000 plus people.

“Welcome Home.”

That’s what the opening wall text read at the media preview of The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Impressionist and Modern Masters exhibit.

The exhibit features 142 works from 19th and 20th century artists such as Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre Renoir, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí.The exhibit originated from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and has been circulating throughout the world for the past three years.

“We’re excited to welcome the return of some of the museum’s most treasured and cherished works of art,” CMA director Timothy Rub said in a press release. “Many of our visitors will be pleased to know they can see some of their old friends back on temporary display.”

Impressionist and Modern Masters was featured at museums in Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul and Vancouver, and drew more than 700,000 spectators.

“The tour thus far has been by any measure a great success,” Rub said. “Nearly three-fourths of a million people have seen the show in these four venues, and I think we can safely say that when the tour is over, more than 1 million people will have seen the Cleveland production in various parts of the world.”

The exhibition will be back in Cleveland from Oct. 21 through Jan. 13.

“Impressionist and Modern Masters is one of a series of traveling shows organized by our own staff as a means of keeping the permanent collection on view while the museum is undergoing extensive renovation and expansion,” curator William H. Robinson said.

After its time spent in Cleveland, the exhibition will travel to Nashville, Salt Lake City and Detroit before returning to Cleveland permanently when the new East Wing is completed.

The exhibition is set up with an airport feeling, emphasizing the aspect of travel.

Tickets are taken at a small terminal, and the opening room contains the actual crates that the pieces were carried in with exhibition text written directly upon them.

The works of art are divided into four chronological parts that follows the impressionist movement all the way into modern art.

The first section, The Impressionist Epoch, features works of art by Édouard Manet, Pierre Renoir, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet.

Towering in the center of the gallery is a large sculpture of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker.

The second section, Rodin and the Birth of Modern Sculpture, is a section dedicated to the works of Rodin.

The Thinker and the enormous Heroic Head of Pierre de Wiessant are two of the most prominent pieces in the section.

The third section, Beyond Impressionism features works by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre Bonnard among others.

The final section, Picasso and the Avant-garde, concentrates on the artistic ideas of cubism and surrealism featuring Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí among others.The exhibition is free to visitors, however, timed tickets are required for entry.

Hours are from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends and from 10 a.m. until 9 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays.

Contact College of the Arts and College of Architecture and Environmental Design reporter Sam Twarek at [email protected].