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.