Plaster casts molded from artworks are ubiquitous in museum and university collections. In the art history department at the university of Vienna, for instance, a small vitrine surrounded by plants displays old plaster casts of medieval ivories. The installation functions simultaneously as an educational tool from the past, an archive of the department history, and a decorative ensemble. The German anthropologist Leo Frobenius had multiple plaster casts made of several terracottas he excavated in 1910 in Ife, Nigeria, marked them with his name and donated them to European ethnographic museums. He thus transformed masterpieces of an ancient West African civilization into his own . . . → En lire plus
Plaster casts molded from artworks are ubiquitous in museum and university collections. In the art history department at the university of Vienna, for instance, a small vitrine surrounded by plants displays old plaster casts of medieval ivories. The installation functions simultaneously as an educational tool from the past, an archive of the department history, and a decorative ensemble. The German anthropologist Leo Frobenius had multiple plaster casts made of several terracottas he excavated in 1910 in Ife, Nigeria, marked them with his name and donated them to European ethnographic museums. He thus transformed masterpieces of an ancient West African civilization into his own . . . → En lire plus
