Paper short abstract:

Plaster casts taken from the finest statues and monuments testify the continuous evolution in modern art institutions. In this paper we will show how these transformations reflect a new awareness in the value of Art, and the advancement in the concepts of education, collecting and museology.

Paper long abstract:

Plaster casts, taken from the finest statues and monuments, can often testify the continuous transformation in the taste for Art, throughout modern history. In this paper we will show how the display of these objects came to reflect various cultural challenges engendered by society and the evolution in the concepts of education, collecting, museology.

The beginning of this movement is more strictly recognisable in plaster casts, sent from Italy, to other European countries from the XVI century onwards. Furthermore, it is interesting to single out that, the collections assembled in Art Academies, laid the basis for the first public museums of sculpture, in a time that State museums, had less valuable collections. In this sense, the story of art museums in the nineteenth century proves that, also outside of Italy the collecting of sculpture had its origins in the influence laid by classical antiquity into Occidental culture.

In this period, Germany's University collections came to be regard as role models, especially in the field of classical archaeology, thus paving the way for one of the most enduring senses of utility for casts. Therefore, the reproductions of sculptures and ornaments acquired by Academies, Schools of Art, Universities and Museums synthetize the multiple commitments and challenges this institutions embraced, symbolizing today the esteem in which the originals were held up until the nineteenth, and the hatred for retrograde teaching methods, in the course of twentieth century.