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                                                                                           According to the Assoicated Press, he has been locked away in storage for 16 months during the renovation and expansion of the Cleveland Museum of Art, but now art patrons have a rare chance to see Rodin's imposing The Thinker face-to-face.

The hulking figure of a man sitting at the gates of hell, his chin resting on his right hand, previously perched on a pedestal outside the white marble museum overlooking a grand staircase and lagoon.

Now, at least temporarily, the sculpture acquired in 1917 has come down to eye level, displayed indoors as part of a special exhibit of 142 museum masterpieces. Half have just returned to their home after a making 15-month tour of Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, South Korea, and Vancouver, Canada — an exhibit that drew more than 680,000 people.

The Thinker did not make the trip, instead left behind in storage as the museum plowed ahead with a six-year, $258 million (€180.6 million) expansion and renovation to provide more gallery, office and parking space at its parklike setting in the city's museum-university district.

The exhibit "Impressionist and Modern Masters From the Cleveland Museum of Art" opens Sunday and runs through Jan. 13. It includes Claude Monet's "The Red Kerchief," "Dancers" by Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin's "In the Waves" and Salvador Dali's "The Dream."

"They are first-rank, first-rate works by these amazing artists that every museum would love to have," said an admiring Leslie Curtis, associate professor of art history at nearby John Carroll University.

Curtis said an impressive part of the exhibit is its concentration of masterpieces, including works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Renoir, Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh.

The touring portion of the exhibit will leave Cleveland again next year and head to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee, on Feb. 14, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on June 22 and the Detroit Institute of Art on Oct. 12. The works will rejoin the permanent collection in 2009 and the renovation-expansion will be complete in 2011.

Most of the works will be seen as beloved favorites to many who have missed the collection during the museum's virtual shutdown, but the close-up display of the iconic The Thinker is sure to get extra attention from visitors.

The idea of putting The Thinker in a snug indoor gallery did not sit well with everyone.

"I have some colleagues who didn't care for that," said William H. Robinson, curator of modern European art at the museum. "I really wanted to give people a different experience of that sculpture because they are used to seeing it outdoors and from a distance. When you see it close up, it's different. I don't think people will ever see that sculpture again the same way."

"He could use some more space, but I like being able to get close to it," he said.

The sculpture, about 6 feet (1.8 meters) high, is one of more than 20 casts of The Thinker around the world. The base of the Cleveland sculpture was damaged by a dynamite blast on March 24, 1970, and police blamed the radical Weathermen group. The base of The Thinker was never repaired.

Timothy Rub, museum director, said the touring exhibit helped showcase a Cleveland cultural treasure.

"Cities like this are known sometimes by their greatest assets — sometimes by their greatest cultural assets — and I think that's one thing that's true about Cleveland," he said Thursday during a media preview. "The reputation of the orchestra is worldwide, the reputation of this institution is worldwide as well."

The traveling exhibit served the museum and city well by expanding the museum's audience and highlighting its blue-collar hometown, Rub said. "It's a wonderful ambassadorial function we've been able to play," he said.

Like the museum, admission to the exhibit is free.