Plaster Monuments

"Shortlisted for the 2018 DAM Architectural Book Award, Deutsches Architekturmuseum" "An excellent book . . . about the desire on the part of nineteenth-century museums to collect reproductions at least as much as originals in order to demonstrate the history of art in as systematic and comprehensive way as possible [and] illustrated with wonderful images of cast collections."---Charles Saumarez Smith "It is timely amid new contexts for preservation and when reproduction technologies are advancing, that Lendings analysis reveals the significance of their plaster precursors."---Olivia Horsfall Turner, Apollo "This is a marvellous book, an original contribution to our understanding of how plaster casts of sculpture and architectural elements were manufactured and displayed in museums throughout Europe and America, which makes important points concerning their cultural, political, educational and philosophical significance."---James Stevens Curl, Times Higher Education "As Lending argues, the plaster monument was a part of the separation of originals and copies in the nineteenth century, a topic that continues into the twenty-first century. . . . Despite new media, technical methods and intellectual frameworks, the cast monument remains a key part of our cultural context and our interaction with the past."---Matthew Wells, Burlington Magazine "The first history of the rise and fall of architectural casts. . . . Invaluable for students of museum history, not least for its excellent illustrations."---James Hall, The Art Newspaper "There is much to learn from this rich studyhow buildings and their representations always form a strange symbiosis, the ways we encounter architecture, and how monuments are always in flux. . . . [The book] is superbly illustrated, including archival documents and evocative photographs of cast galleries as they originally appeared."---Lisa Godson, Journal of Design History "Lending weaves a vast scholarship around the objects at hand. . . . Plaster Monuments must be read cover to cover lest the reader risk missing brilliant insights offered in the most unexpected places."---Can Bilsel, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians "With impeccable scholarship and a sure sense of narrative, Mari Lending embarks her reader on a fascinating exploration of what these casts, once considered as precious and certainly expensive to produce, represented for their 19th-century sponsors. . . . Starting from an inquiry into a long-lost practice, Plaster Monuments: Architecture and the Power of Reproduction achieves much more than making its reader aware of what once was. It triggers important questions about architecture both as a discipline and as a mediated presence."---Antoine Picon, Architecture Histories "[A] fascinating exploration. . . . Lendings evocative prose is accompanied by numerous well- chosen illustrations, many previously unpublished. These images, together with her exciting archival discoveries and rich interpretation, make a compelling argument for the power of reproduction to shape our understanding of buildings. Plaster Monuments is a welcome reminder that the auratic value of the monuments absolute originality is as much a fiction as the idea of its unlimited, transparent reproducibility. The book also serves as a timely invitation to consider the contemporary forms of technical mediation without which our own discourses of architectural history and preservation would be unthinkable."---Joseph L. Clarke, Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism

Mari Lending is professor of architectural history and theory at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. Her books include, with Mari Hvattum, Modelling Time and, with Peter Zumthor, A Feeling for History.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Monuments in Flux 1 Plaster Perfection Exhibiting History Portable Monuments Antiquities as Novelties Reassessing a Space in Time 1 Travels in the Province of Reproductions 30 Architecture Museums Rome-London-Paris-New York American Perfection An Epitome of Monuments in Central Park Traveling in the Province of Reproductions Temporal Cartographies Scaffolded Visibility 2 Trocadero: Proust's Museum 70 The Tyranny of the Particular Viollet-le-Duc's Museum Plaster Kiss Traversing Names and Landscapes Patina and the Work of Time Museophilia 3 The Poetics of Plaster 106 Monuments in Time Monuments in Space and Scale Collapsing Taxonomies Architectural Promenades At Home in History: Traveling Portals Preserved in Plaster 4 Cablegrams and Monuments 145 The Hall of Architecture, Pittsburgh A Readymade Monument Beaux-Arts Contemporaneity Move Every Stone! Cast in Situ, Lost at Sea Remounting Monuments 5 The Yale Battle of the Casts: Albers vs Rudolph 183 The Yale Cast Collection Historical or Contemporary Beaux-Arts Brutalism Cast Concrete and Plaster Casts Chance Encounters The Man, the Symptom Polychronic Wonders Fractured Temporalities (Learning from History) Coda: Lost Continents, Fluctuating Objects 225 Museum Vogues The Politics of Reproductions When the Cathedrals Were White Notes 238 Bibliography 264 Index 275 Illustration Credits 282