Blast from the Casts

The Blast from the Casts project is an interactive online exhibition bringing the Battle Collection of plaster casts of ancient sculpture, currently held by the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas, together as a cohesive collection in digital form to make in-depth, up-close, personal interaction with the casts widely accessible to students and the public. The website features interactive 3D models of the individual casts, a map and timeline presenting the historical context of both the original sculptures and the 19th/early 20th-century casts, and informational pages presenting Humanities perspectives on the historical, cultural, and artistic debates raised by both plaster casts and original Greek and Roman sculptures. It was inspired in part by artist Lily Cox-Richard's 2019 exhibition at the Blanton titled She-Wolf + Lower Figs, which not only challenged the pervasive myth of a monochrome antiquity, but addressed questions on the very notions of “taste”—especially of Western taste—in the study of the “classical” legacy. With the support of Cox-Richard and Humanities Texas, and in collaboration with both representatives from the Blanton and local teachers whose students are the primary audience for the online exhibit, Blast from the Casts seeks to advance the dialogue Cox-Richard started between old and new 3D technologies through a widely-accessible digital platform, and to explicitly address the contexts of antiquity lost across space and time. By doing so, we hope to help students and teachers more easily explore contemporary issues surrounding collecting, authenticity, and ethnocentric whiteness.