In the meantime, Steichen had become friends with the famous sculptor Auguste Rodin in Paris, and he convinced Rodin to lend him some of his drawings for a show at the gallery in New York. The 1908 gallery season started with the show "Drawings by Auguste Rodin", the first exhibit in the United States of his works on paper. The show caused a significant amount of controversy in the press, with one critic saying "they are not the sort of thing to offer to public view even in a gallery."