Rodin’s Thinker, Detroit Institute of Art, photo by Robert Yanal.

The Detroit Institute of Arts has a collection of over 60,000 works of art across a wide range of media. One of the most visible is their cast of sculptor August Rodin’s iconic sculpture, The Thinker. More than twenty monumental size bronze casts of the sculpture are in museums around the world. Rodin made the first small plaster version around 1880, but the first large-scale bronze cast was not completed until 1902.

The DIA’s version sits outside the museum’s main entrance. It was cast in 1904 and donated to the museum by Horace H. Rackham in 1922. The bronze sculpture weighs about 2000 pounds and sits on a 12,000 pound granite base. You can see more views of The Thinker at the DIA.

Check this out bigger and in Robert’s Detroit slideshow.

More sculpture on Michigan in Pictures.