Plaster and Plaster Casts: Materiality and Practice
Conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Friday 12 and Saturday 13 March 2010
Hochhauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre
10.00-17.30
Plaster casts have received increasing scholarly attention over the last
few years, above all in relation to their place in the history of
collecting, issues of display, and the conservation of the plasters
themselves. This conference will focus on issues of reception and artistic
practice, positioning plaster and plaster casts in the wider context of
recent sculpture research. For the first time it will bring together
sculpture and architecture in the context of plaster. Led by Eckart
Marchand (The Warburg Institute, London), Marjorie Trusted (Senior Curator
of Sculpture, V&A) and Charles Hind (RIBA), speakers are drawn from
Britain, the United States, Poland, France, Germany and Belgium.
£70, £60 concessions for both days,
£35, £30 concessions for one day,
£30, students for both days
Ticket price includes buffet lunch.
To book call +44 (0)20 7942 2211
Provisional Programme:
Friday 12 March 2010
10:00 Registration Coffee
10:20 Mark Jones (Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum), Welcome
Session 1 Casting the Body
Chair: Eckart Marchand (The Warburg Institute)
10:30 Genevieve Warwick, (Glasgow University), Plaster Casts and
Portrait Busts: Bernini and the Death Mask
11:00 Victoria Gardner Coates, (University of Pennsylvania),
Re-Casting Pompeii
11:30 Discussion
11:40 Ellery Foutch, (University of Pennsylvania), Embodying the
Medium: The Plaster
Cast of Eugen Sandow
12:10 Mark Elliott, (University of Cambridge), Ethnographic Plaster Casts
12:40 Discussion
13:15 Lunch (provided)
Session 2 Makers and Uses
Chair: Helen Smailes (National Gallery of Scotland)
14:15 Charlotte Schreiter, (Humboldt University), Artists or
Craftsmen? "Formatori" in Sculptors' Workshops and Art Manufactories in the
18th and early 19th Centuries
14:45 Joanna Lubos-Koziel, (University of Wroclaw), Plaster Casts in
the Service of Religion: plaster casts and other mould-made sculptures in
catholic practice in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of
the 20th century.
15:15 Discussion
15:30 Coffee / Tea
Session 3 Plaster Casts and Classicism in the Nineteenth Century
Chair: Marjorie Trusted (Victoria and Albert Museum)
16:00 Karen Lemmey, Metropolitan Museum, New York, Permanent in
Plaster: A Final Medium in Nineteenth-century American Sculpture
16:30 Kate Nichols, University of Bristol, Mechanical Reproduction,
Mass Audiences and Beautiful Manufacture
17:00 Discussion
17:30 End of day
Saturday 13 March 2010
10:00 - 10:15 Arrival
Session 3 Artists' Practice, Modern and Contemporary
Chair: Petra Lange-Berndt (University College London)
10:15 Jennifer Way, University of North Texas, "To make my paint more
concrete": Plaster as Painting's Commodity Form in the Art of Claes
Oldenburg
10:45 Christoph Zuschlag, University of Koblenz-Landau, Plaster Casts in
Contemporary Art
11:15 Coffee / Tea
Session 4 Architecture and the Decorative Arts
Chair: Charles Hind (RIBA and Victoria and Albert Museum)
11:45 Claire Jones, University of York, Plaster as Historic Resource
and Creative Medium in Nineteenth-Century French Decorative Art
12:15 Linda Van Santvoort, University of Ghent, A forgotten trade: the
French ornamentist Georges Houtstont (1832-1912) and his role in the
horror vacui of 19th-century Brussels
12:45 Discussion
13:15 Lunch (provided)
14:15 Isabelle Flour, University Paris 1, Plaster Casts, Historicism
and Eclecticism in Architectural Practice in Britain, 1850-1900
14:45 Wallis Miller, University of Kentucky, Plaster Casts and Modern
Theory: Exhibiting Berlin Architecture in 1901
15:15 Coffee / Tea
Session 5 Plaster Casts and Other Reproductive Media
Chair: Charles Saumarez Smith (The Royal Academy, London)
15:45 Carolyn Yerkes, Columbia University, AParallel of Charles
Errard's Architectural Engravings and Plaster Casts.
16:15 Stefanie Klamm, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science,
Berlin, Plurality of Media: Uses of Plaster Casts in 19th-Century
Classical Archaeology
16:30 General Discussion
17:15 Close
With generous support from Gerda Henkel Stiftung, The Henry Moore
Foundation and Tomasso Brothers Fine Art.
Quellennachweis:
CONF: Plaster and Plaster Casts. Materiality and Practice (London, 12-13 Mar 2010). In: ArtHist.net, 13.01.2010. Letzter Zugriff 11.07.2025. <https://arthist.net/archive/32256>.