Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

My doctorate questions the significance of copies in museums. Three-dimensional and digital surrogates are becoming more and more present in the museum experience. Could this trend inform us about the fluidity and, to some extents, ambiguity of the ideas around authenticity? In the varied world of reproductions, I focus on plaster casts of archaeological subject, traditionally conceived as ‘replicas’ of famous masterpieces of Antiquity. My case study is the Cast Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum, one of the oldest and best preserved collections in the UK. Its inception began at the end of the nineteenth century, when casts were acquired to support the development of Classical archaeology at Oxford University. The educational purpose is the raison d’être of such collection still today, being casts widely employed in lectures, drawing classes and museum activities, during which sculptures are deliberately treated as if they were the originals. Labels in the gallery refer to the ancient artworks, too. However, the distinctive features of plaster casts are not straightforward to a general audience visiting the gallery, people with diverse social, cultural and geographical backgrounds. Confusion arises as colouring - the brownish and greenish patinations of some pieces - foster the ambivalence of considering casts as real, “auratic” marbles or bronzes. Excerpts of interviews with visitors and museum staff will show the complex interrelations between originality and reproducibility in art and museums, but will also prove the potential such traditional antithesis can offer if we rethink about it more inclusively.