Decolonizing Collections: The Reception and Consumption of Classical Casts in Pedagogy in the British Empire

该项目的目的是首次对古董石膏的进口、传播和作用提供重要的和亟需的历史洞察，这些石膏是印度次大陆的教学收藏品和视觉展示中缺失的经典作品的教材和忠实表现手段。与现代博物馆中被转移或被盗的文物没有什么不同，古典雕塑的铸件，当在后殖民环境中被发现时，与帝国主义叙事有着千丝万缕的联系：它们的使用和展示将阐明西方理想在艺术中的传播--通过使用希腊和罗马雕塑--在19世纪和20世纪初殖民/帝国文化政策的实施中所起的作用。该项目将设在阿什莫林博物馆的铸件画廊，这是英国保存最好、保存最好的博物馆之一，它完全植根于教学文化和收藏实践，这决定了19世纪学术界将被送往国外的一套铸件。它将受益于印度接受古典文化方面的一位世界专家的跨学科监督，以及与(斯里兰卡)科伦坡表演和视觉艺术大学视觉艺术学院演员阵容的合作伙伴关系。它最终将对阿什莫兰收藏品和古典文学课程的非殖民化行动产生重大影响，并将经常被忽视的博物馆文物类别纳入当前关于殖民主义、帝国主义和民族主义的国际辩论中。

This project aims at providing for the first time an important and much-needed historical insight into the import,dissemination and role of plaster casts from the antique, as teaching materials and means of faithful representations ofabsent classical works, in pedagogic collections and visual displays of the Indian subcontinent. No different to displaced or"stolen" artefacts in modern museums, casts of classical sculpture, when found in postcolonial environments, areinextricably connected to imperialism narratives: their use and display will illuminate the role of the diffusion of the westernideal in art - through the use of Greek and Roman sculptures - in the implementation of 19th and early 20th centuriescolonial/imperial cultural policies.The project will be based in the Cast Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum, one of the finest and best preserved in the UnitedKingdom, and one that is fully grounded in both the teaching culture and collecting practice that determined the set of caststo be sent abroad in 19th c. academia. It will benefit from the interdisciplinary supervision of one of the world experts in thereception of Classical culture in India, and of the partnership with the collection of casts of the Faculty of Visual Arts of theUniversity of Performing and Visual Arts at Colombo (Sri Lanka). It will ultimately have a major impact on initiatives in thedecolonization of both the Ashmolean's collections and the Classics curriculum, and insert an often-neglected category ofmuseum objects into current international debates on colonialism, imperialism and nationalism.