Holy Cross Classics Professor to Talk About Pivotal Moment in Greek Art and Museums

WORCESTER, Mass. – Ellen Perry, associate professor of classics at the College of the Holy Cross, will give a talk titled "The Battle of the Casts: Museums and the Classics at the Turn of the Last Century" on Feb. 9 at 7 p.m. in the Hogan Campus Center, Room 519. The lecture is free and open to the public.

At the turn of the century, what most people knew about Greek art, they knew through the medium of plaster. The 1905 construction in Boston of a new building for the Museum of Fine Arts brought the debate about the value of plaster casts to the fore. This "Battle of the Casts" was a debate about the purpose of the art museum as a whole and whether an art museum should educate or simply provide objects, which people would admire aesthetically.  The latter view prevailed in the short term, the result being the removal of plaster cast collections, followed by the acquisition of original, but often second-rate sculptures.  Professor Perry will discuss how this change in museum practice has altered our expectations as museum-goers, as well as our view of the ancient world.

Perry received her Ph.D. in classics from the University of Michigan and specializes in classical archaeology, ancient sculpture, Roman art and rhetoric.  Her book The Aesthetics of Emulation in the Visual Arts of Ancient Rome was published last year by Cambridge University Press.

The lecture is sponsored by the department of classics at Holy Cross and the Hellenic Arts Society of Worcester.