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Firing the Canon: Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture and their Discontents

September 30, 2015, 7:00 pm
Location Dickson Hall - Cohen Lounge
SponsorArchaeological Institute of America and the Center for Heritage and Archaeological StudiesMore Informationhttp:/‌/‌www.montclair.edu/‌chss/‌center-heritage-archaeological-studies/‌Posted InCollege of Humanities and Social Sciences

You are invited to a talk by a Cornell University professor on 19th-20th century collections of plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture, what it meant to create them, how changing tastes led to their oblivion, and what meaning and use might be attached to them in the future:

The Archaeological Institute of America and the Center for Heritage and Archaeological Studies present an illustrated lecture

Firing the Canon: Plaster Casts of Ancient Sculpture and their Discontents by Dr. Verity Platt, Department of Classics, Cornell University

When: Wednesday, September 30, 2015, 7:00 PM
Where: Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall first floor

ALL ARE INVITED

As co-curator of Cornell University’s extensive collection of plaster casts of ancient art, Dr. Platt has been involved in a lengthy and ongoing project to recover, preserve, restore, catalog, and digitize a category of objects that were once valued but currently have a very unstable status in the culture of museums and academe. She will discuss a recent series of exhibitions at Cornell which examine the history of plaster casts in the reception and appreciation of Greco-Roman art, the teaching of the Fine Arts, and the field of Classical Archaeology. She will particularly look at why casts were rejected, removed from view, damaged and destroyed during the Twentieth  Century, using Cornell’s casts as an example for tracing the rise, fall—and incipient recovery—of this ancient form of “copy culture.”

Further information:  973-655-7420, rennert@mail.montclair.edu
http://www.montclair.edu/chss/center-heritage-archaeological-studies/