I recently organized a field trip for the Museum Studies Program at George Washington University to take students back into the history of museums and its potential future. We visited the temporary studio of George Morton, an artist in residence at the the National Gallery of Art and Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, who is exploring the use of 3D printing to “activate the collections” and “look at collections anew.”

Morton is an accomplished painter who has been investigating the history of cast halls, once a familiar feature of art museums and art schools. During the nineteenth century, institutions purchased plaster casts of important sculptures so that students could study works they might never have an opportunity to see in person. The casts were used to teach drawing, painting, and art history, allowing students to learn by closely observing works by recognized masters.

The Corcoran itself once had an extensive cast collection. Like many such collections, however, it largely disappeared in the early twentieth century as museums and schools increasingly favored original works of art over reproductions. A few major cast collections survive. In the United States, one of the most extensive can be found at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, while the Victoria and Albert Museum in London preserves two monumental Cast Courts.

Morton is now asking whether 3D scanning and printing might offer a contemporary version of the cast hall.

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