France's top court says a 3D scan of a Rodin sculpture isn't a document
Cosmo Wenman spent eight years asking the Rodin Museum in Paris for the 3D scans it made of Auguste Rodin's sculptures, arguing that scans made with public money are public records.
Cosmo Wenman spent eight years asking the Rodin Museum in Paris for the 3D scans it made of Auguste Rodin’s sculptures, arguing that scans made with public money are public records (Cosmo Wenman). France’s highest administrative court, the Conseil d’État, ruled against him on December 23, 2025 (Conseil d’État).
CADA, the French commission that rules on records requests, had told the museum the files were administrative documents and gave a favorable opinion on releasing them (The Art Newspaper), and a Paris court ordered some of the files released in 2023 (Conseil d’État). The museum never appealed that order and simply ignored it, Wenman writes. The Conseil d’État rejected his appeal for the rest of the files, holding that neither the works in the collection nor their reproductions, “même numérique” (even digital), count as administrative documents under French public-records law (Conseil d’État), and Wenman says that reasoning effectively undid his earlier win.
The museum, a public institution, partly relies on producing original bronze editions, and a lecturer quoted by The Art Newspaper called it France’s only national museum that runs without government subsidies. Its director at the time, Catherine Chevillot, warned of “disastrous consequences” and forgeries if the files got out, and Wenman had said he would make his own bronze replicas from them (The Art Newspaper).
At the December 2025 hearing, the court’s own legal analyst opened with Magritte’s painting of a pipe captioned “this is not a pipe” and argued that sometimes a document is not a document, which is why Wenman titled his write-up after “The Treachery of Images” (Cosmo Wenman).
The ruling binds only French museums, so if a public museum near you has scanned its collection, ask it whether the files are available, and if they aren’t, file a public-records request and find out what your own law says. If you 3D print, I’d start with the scans museums already publish openly, because those are the ones you can get today.
After eight years, the scans stay in the museum’s files, and Wenman owes the museum €3,000 toward its legal costs (Conseil d’État).