Prepare your souls. The gates of hell have been opened in State College ... and they're even more beautiful than you could imagine.

Rodin's Obsession: The Gates of Hell, Selections from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collection opened last Tuesday at Palmer Museum of Art. It is one of three new exhibits that will be on display at the museum through the spring semester.

"We are really running the gamut this year. We have exhibits that include works from both known and lesser-known artists," said Robin Seymour, Palmer Museum spokeswoman and membership coordinator. "It really gives people a nice spectrum."

Besides the Auguste Rodin collection, the museum will take a closer look at the career of John Covert and explore some very American themes in a collection of American art owned by Jean and Alvin Snowiss in a third exhibit.

The Gates of Hell collection includes 30 of Rodin's works in bronze. Rodin began sculpting the individual pieces in 1880 to be used for a door of a museum that was going to be built in Paris. Although the museum was never built, Rodin continued to bring his images to life in the form of individual, freestanding sculptures.

"The Thinker" is one of the most famous images that was supposed to be part of the door, and a bronze of it is included in the exhibit.

The commission to create The Gates of Hell was the biggest of Rodin's career and it finally showed the world the depth of his imagination. Joyce Robinson, exhibition curator, said that because Rodin's sculpture's looked so lifelike, people believed that he took artistic shortcuts such as casting molds on human bodies. But his sculptures from The Gates of Hell project changed all that.

"The doors are a test to his artistic vision," Robinson said.

"It shows he wasn't merely reproducing bodies," she said.

In addition to the sculptures themselves, a step-by-step display has been set up to illustrate the complicated lost-wax process Rodin used to create his pieces.

The museum will unveil its next exhibit, John Covert Rediscovered, on Feb. 11.

"We have found pieces no one has ever seen before," said Leo Mazow, exhibition curator. "That's what we mean by rediscovered."

Covert had been an artist of the Dada movement, but when he closed his New York studio in 1923, many people believed that was the end of his career.

Mazow said that's not exactly what happened, and the exhibit shows this with entries from Covert's daybooks that are covered in drawings.

"You can say the daybooks are works of art in their own right," Mazow said.

The exhibit also explores the side of Covert that was enthralled with photography -- a side not many people know.

The museum's newest gallery is playing host to the third new exhibit this semester, An Endless Panorama of Beauty: Selections from the Jean and Alvin Snowiss Collection of American Art.

The exhibit houses more than 50 works, each portraying its own American theme. Included in the collection are works from artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe and John Sloan.

"It includes artwork from the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries," Seymour said. "You can really trace the history of American art through this exhibition."

The museum is open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays.