These copies helped preserve some of the originals in situ, yet the documentation attached to these monuments (photos, drawings, molds) are now often stored in western museums and archives (or in the case of Sanchi’s casts, lost). In contrast to the Classical copies, copies made during colonial explorations and exploitations, such as those from Sanchi and Angkor Wat, were often grouped together and displayed as “Oriental” or “primitive” art. Historically, these plaster statues were exhibited as the predecessors to European art (and for Renaissance they were), and positioned as continuing the classical artistic and aesthetic lineage. Reproduced Greek and Roman white plaster statues - replicating the underlying marble rather than their original colored versions, have reinforced the idea of white supremacy. European cast making and exchange of plaster copies have played an essential role in the worship of Classical art in European and North American aesthetics, higher education, and architecture. What was copied contributed to such biases. They contributed to a biased picture of what a “masterpiece” or “ great artist” is considered to be. But as art history departments in North American universities have recently realized, such surveys have favored certain cultures and artists (White, Western, industrial, male). The goal with such acquisitions was to create collections that would reflect the history of art and architecture, a museum version of a “survey of art history” for the public. In 1883, a New York businessman bequeathed $100,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to acquire architectural casts. In the 19th century, plaster casts and copies were essential in building collections for the newly established museums, especially in North America. What can historical copies teach us about responsible digital reproductions? Recently, the Chicago University’s Oriental Institute Museum posted about the history of their plaster casts on their Instagram account. In March 2021, the British Academy hosted an international conference on plaster casting. The Gipsformerei (plaster workshop) of the Berlin State Museums celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2019 with an entire exhibition of plaster casts and 3D models.

(Byung Chul Han explains that these were exact reproductions of the original, which, for the Chinese, are of equal value to the original.)īut copies may be having a comeback. In 2007, the Museum of Ethnology in Hamburg closed their exhibit when it became known that the terracotta soldiers loaned from China were not the actual 2,000-year-old artifacts, but their copies. For almost a century, plaster copies were deemed distasteful and soulless, sometimes stored in leaky storehouses, left to rot in boiler rooms, and “ vandalized.” With the exception of dinosaur casts and architectural replicas, many European and North American museums had been reluctant to exhibit copies.

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