Casting a New Light: Plaster Casts & Cast Collections in Europe and Beyond

Casting a New Light delves into various aspects of collecting and showcasing plaster casts, an important phenomenon that shaped European and American art museums from the nineteenth century onwards. It explores international connections and influences in the establishment of cast collections while also shedding new light on the role and uses of plaster casts in the antiquity and in the era of historicism. The volume offers valuable reflections on the intricate contexts of the contemporary reception of these collections, presenting new perspectives on their significance and future, including various conference papers and several case studies.

CONTRIBUTORS
Géza Andó was curator of the Classical Antiquities section of the museum’s plaster cast exhibition in the Star Fortress, Komárom, and of the visible storage at the National Museum Conservation and Storage Centre in Budapest.

Flavia Berizzi is a restorer of cultural heritage, specialising in plaster casts. She studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and the Sapienza University in Rome. She is currently in charge of the restoration of monumental plaster casts, moulded in 1883 by the Milanese master Carlo Campi, at the Federal Polytechnic in Zürich. She collaborates with the Academy and Pinacoteca di Brera in the conservation and digitisation of historical collections.

Rune Frederiksen (†2023) studied classical archaeology in Copenhagen and Rome earning a PhD from the Copenhagen Polis Center (2004). Between 2003–2004, he was employed by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek and taught at the University of Copenhagen, and between 2004–2007, he held a research fellowship at Oxford connected to the University collection of plaster casts of ancient sculpture. From 2008 to 2015, he was based in Athens, from 2010 as the director of the Danish Institute at Athens, and from 2016, he was employed by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek as Head of Collections and Research.

Eszter Hajós-Baku is an expert in the reservation of built heritage. She graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University as an art historian in 2009, and received her PhD in 2018 at the Faculty of Architecture, Department for History of Architecture and Monuments at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Her main research field is sacred architecture in the interwar period, especially in Hungary. She has a special interest in historical plaster casts.

Jean-Marc Hofman has been deputy curator of the cast gallery at the Cité de l’Architecture & du Patrimoine in Paris since 2004. He has published articles on the genesis of the museum’s collections, as well as on the individual and professional trajectory of cast makers and their workshops in Paris. He has curated about twenty exhibitions on archaeology, arts, and historical monuments.

Júlia Katona is an art historian, researcher, and curator. She studied art history at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and obtained her PhD in 2017. She is secretary for scientific research at the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest and head of collection and curator at the Schola Graphidis Art Collection of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. In 2017 she was invited by the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (Paris) as a researcher with her project, The Corpus of Pattern Books and Ornamental Prints Published in the 19th–20th Centuries in Europe.

Eckart Marchand has been Assistant Archivist at the Warburg Institute in London since 2008. From 2014 to 2023, he was also a member of the International Research Group Bilderfahrzeuge: Iconology and the Legacy of Aby Warburg. He has worked extensively on plaster and plaster casts, studying their functions both as copies of well-known originals and as models in sculptors’ workshops. Together with Rune Frederiksen, he was editor of Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present (2010).

Eszter Süvegh studied Classical and Roman provincial archaeology at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and is currently working on her PhD thesis on grotesque depictions in ancient Greek art, particularly in Hellenistic coroplasty. She is an employee of the Collection of Classical Antiquities of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, she joined the ancient Greek and Roman plaster casts project in 2018, working on the preparation of the exhibition and of the visible storage of the collection up to 2021.

Miriam Szocs is head of the Department of Sculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. She specializes in Renaissance and baroque bronzes. She was the curator of the new permanent exhibition of sculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts that opened in 2013. Between 2013 and 2021, she worked on the project of the refurbishment of the plaster cast collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, being the chief curator of the plaster cast exhibition at the Star Fortress in Komárom.

Beáta Szuts graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University with a major in art history in 2016. She began working in the Department of Graphics, Form, and Design at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2013. Since 2016, she has been in charge of the management and study of the collections of historical plaster casts, historical textbooks, and drawings.

Holly Trusted FSA (formerly known as Marjorie Trusted) was senior curator of sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from 1990 until 2018, and was the lead curator for the Cast Courts at the V&A. She has lectured and published widely on sculpture, and is co-founder and co-chair of the Public Statues and Sculpture Association, as well as the founding editor of the Sculpture Journal. A senior research fellow at Durham University and honorary senior research fellow at the University of Glasgow.

Lorenz Winkler-Horacek is the curator of the Cast Collection (Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik) at the Freie Universität Berlin, where he is also a professor of classical archaeology. He received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in 1991, and worked for fourteen years at the University of Rostock. He habilitated in 2004 and moved to the Freie Universität, Berlin in 2007. His field of research is heavily image-based and covers both the Greek and Roman periods. Additionally, he focuses on the history of casts.

Miriam Szocs is head of the Department of Sculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. She specializes in Renaissance and baroque bronzes. She was the curator of the new permanent exhibition of sculptures at the Museum of Fine Arts that opened in 2013. Between 2013 and 2021, she worked on the project of the refurbishment of the plaster cast collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, being the chief curator of the plaster cast exhibition at the Star Fortress in Komárom.