IT'S easy to spot Claudie Judrin among her travelling companions. She's blonde, petite and engaging; they're dark, cold and massive.
When the museum curator from France agreed to give a quick mini-tour of her personal favourites in Sculpture Rodin, an exhibition of 57 works by the master sculptor Auguste Rodin, she became more of a story-teller than the esteemed scholar and chief curator of the Rodin Museum, Paris.
Ms Judrin is as meticulous in demeanor and dress as she is in organising her thoughts on the artist whose life she has studied and works she has known and travelled with around the world for over 18 years.
The din of hammers and workmen tending to last-details in the second floor gallery of the Hongkong Art Museum didn't phase her.
She proceeded to Rodin's love story, using church tones as she weaved through the forest of Herculean bronze bodies, stopping in front of some and gesturing to faces, executed in fine detail enough to be on coins.
''He was married to a woman who was the perfect type of wife for an artist. You know, very devoted. Enslaved, you could say.