During my career in museums, attitudes towards casts and their display have changed radically. This includes the two large Cast Courts at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, which were designed by the architect major general Henry Young Darracott Scott and first opened in 1873.
When I started as an assistant curator at the V&A in 1982, the Cast Courts had recently been redisplayed by the curator Malcolm Baker, with an accompanying leaflet describing their history. But they were often treated as not much more than an interesting anachronism, a residue of the Victorian museum worth preserving as a curiosity, with a hut for the cleaners in the bottom of Trajan’s Column where staff were rumoured to pursue their affairs. The space between the two courts contained a complementary display.
At the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), London, the casts belonging to the art school, now successfully redisplayed by the French museographer Adrien Gardère in the basement vaults, apparently narrowly escaped destruction as late as 2000 when a new teaching regime viewed the RA’s fine collection of antique casts as unwanted relics of a Victorian system of teaching.
Preserving artworks
The second reason for the change in attitude is the increasing destruction of great works of art globally, together with a recognition that artworks are far from sacrosanct. Examples include the wrecking of the giant Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001, the loss of art in museums as a result of the Iraq war in 2003 and the huge losses in Aleppo, Palmyra and Mosul in Syria because of the iconoclasm of Islamic State.
This has made everyone aware that works of art in war zones need to be properly documented using digital techniques so they can, if necessary, be accurately reproduced in the event of their destruction. 3D printing has become more sophisticated and is now a non-invasive technology, so it does not damage the surface of objects in the way that casting and electrotypes did.
Another reason for the revived interest in cast collections is that a number of contemporary artists have themselves been interested in, if not obsessed by, the idea of the cast. These include the sculptors Antony Gormley, who has done multiple casts from his own body, and Rachel Whiteread, who has done casts of the inside of buildings, including one of room 101 at Broadcasting House, London, in which George Orwell produced propaganda for the BBC’s India service.
The new courts opened last December. The biggest change, other than repainting and relabelling the galleries (and clearing the cleaners out of the base of Trajan’s Column) is that a display on fakes, which used to run in between the two Cast Courts, has been replaced with displays containing detailed documentary interpretation. This is well handled and gives visitors a better understanding of how and why the Cast Courts came into being.
Central casting
How successful is the redisplay? The galleries certainly made me think about why the Victorians were so obsessed by casts, travelling all over the empire to obtain reproductions wherever it was not possible to buy (or sometimes steal) the originals. The Cast Courts now provide the same high-quality visitor experience that the rest of the V&A offers.
It used to be thought that making casts was a way of giving people an opportunity to see works of art that they would not otherwise get to see. But it is now suggested, probably correctly, that this fanatic casting ran in parallel with the much-increased opportunities for travel in the 1860s and 1870s, and the fascination and passion for visiting Spain and Florence. It was a three-dimensional souvenir – something that tourists now create on their mobile phones.
The biggest change is a shift in attitude towards the Cast Courts from being an unexpected spectacle, enjoyable for the casual visitor, but not central to an understanding of the museum, to something that preserves and protects the original documentary mission of the V&A. The casts record the physical appearance of objects and works of art by whatever means possible and treat them as examples of design to inspire students and encourage British manufacture.
Charles Saumarez Smith is the senior director of Blain|Southern gallery, London and Berlin, and was the secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, London
When I started as an assistant curator at the V&A in 1982, the Cast Courts had recently been redisplayed by the curator Malcolm Baker, with an accompanying leaflet describing their history. But they were often treated as not much more than an interesting anachronism, a residue of the Victorian museum worth preserving as a curiosity, with a hut for the cleaners in the bottom of Trajan’s Column where staff were rumoured to pursue their affairs. The space between the two courts contained a complementary display.
At the Royal Academy of Arts (RA), London, the casts belonging to the art school, now successfully redisplayed by the French museographer Adrien Gardère in the basement vaults, apparently narrowly escaped destruction as late as 2000 when a new teaching regime viewed the RA’s fine collection of antique casts as unwanted relics of a Victorian system of teaching.
What has caused the change in attitude to casts? The first reason for the increased respect for them is the interest in the history of museums, in which the V&A, with its rich research culture and the exceptional complexity of its own history, has been a pioneer.
This was evident in the major exhibition A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert Museum organised by the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1997. The show viewed the museum and its history as an artefact in its own right and, today, the V&A’s director, Tristram Hunt, speaks passionately as a Victorian historian about the original didactic mission of the V&A from which the Cast Courts sprang.
Preserving artworks
The second reason for the change in attitude is the increasing destruction of great works of art globally, together with a recognition that artworks are far from sacrosanct. Examples include the wrecking of the giant Buddhas in Afghanistan by the Taliban in 2001, the loss of art in museums as a result of the Iraq war in 2003 and the huge losses in Aleppo, Palmyra and Mosul in Syria because of the iconoclasm of Islamic State.
This has made everyone aware that works of art in war zones need to be properly documented using digital techniques so they can, if necessary, be accurately reproduced in the event of their destruction. 3D printing has become more sophisticated and is now a non-invasive technology, so it does not damage the surface of objects in the way that casting and electrotypes did.
Another reason for the revived interest in cast collections is that a number of contemporary artists have themselves been interested in, if not obsessed by, the idea of the cast. These include the sculptors Antony Gormley, who has done multiple casts from his own body, and Rachel Whiteread, who has done casts of the inside of buildings, including one of room 101 at Broadcasting House, London, in which George Orwell produced propaganda for the BBC’s India service.
As a result of these changes and an awareness that visitors loved the Cast Courts but were annoyed when told that they consisted only of copies, the V&A decided some years ago to redisplay them and, crucially, reinterpret them under two curators, Holly Trusted and Angus Patterson.
It also employed the design studio Metaphor to help with the method of interpretation. The project has been funded by Sir Paul Ruddock, a former chairman of the V&A, the Nirmal Sethia family and the ever-generous Garfield Weston Foundation.
The new courts opened last December. The biggest change, other than repainting and relabelling the galleries (and clearing the cleaners out of the base of Trajan’s Column) is that a display on fakes, which used to run in between the two Cast Courts, has been replaced with displays containing detailed documentary interpretation. This is well handled and gives visitors a better understanding of how and why the Cast Courts came into being.
The first case, for example, shows the 2017 ReACH (Reproduction of Art and Cultural Heritage) Declaration about the benefits of digital reproduction alongside V&A founding director Henry Cole’s 1867 Convention, which led to museums and galleries cooperating in the making of casts.
There are also examples of surviving plaster casts as evidence of lost works of art: one is a piece of plasterwork decoration from the Tuileries Palace, which was destroyed in the Paris Commune; the other is the ceiling of a pub in Banbury, Oxfordshire, that was sold to the interior decorator Lenygon and later destroyed in the second world war.
Central casting
How successful is the redisplay? The galleries certainly made me think about why the Victorians were so obsessed by casts, travelling all over the empire to obtain reproductions wherever it was not possible to buy (or sometimes steal) the originals. The Cast Courts now provide the same high-quality visitor experience that the rest of the V&A offers.
It used to be thought that making casts was a way of giving people an opportunity to see works of art that they would not otherwise get to see. But it is now suggested, probably correctly, that this fanatic casting ran in parallel with the much-increased opportunities for travel in the 1860s and 1870s, and the fascination and passion for visiting Spain and Florence. It was a three-dimensional souvenir – something that tourists now create on their mobile phones.
The biggest change is a shift in attitude towards the Cast Courts from being an unexpected spectacle, enjoyable for the casual visitor, but not central to an understanding of the museum, to something that preserves and protects the original documentary mission of the V&A. The casts record the physical appearance of objects and works of art by whatever means possible and treat them as examples of design to inspire students and encourage British manufacture.
Charles Saumarez Smith is the senior director of Blain|Southern gallery, London and Berlin, and was the secretary and chief executive of the Royal Academy of Arts, London
Project data
- Cost Undisclosed
- Main funders Ruddock Foundation for the Arts; N Sethia Foundation; Garfield Weston Foundation; American Friends of the V&A; American Express; DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund
- Main contractor Sykes
- Build Coventry Scaffolding
- Electrics SSE Commercial; Vertex
- Planning consultant WYG
- Exhibition design Metaphor
- Conservation architect Julian Harrap
- Lighting DHA Design; Sutton Vane Associates
- Graphic design Lucy or Robert; Why Not Associates
- Film Story B
- Display cases Reier
- Admission Free
