Program Director Jorge Otero-Pailos speaks with Victoria and Albert Museum conservator Sarah Healey-Dilkes about her conservation work on the museum’s full-size plaster cast of Trajan’s column.
A centerpiece of the nineteenth-century Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the cast of Trajan’s column posed unique challenges as a simultaneous work of archaeological reproduction, plaster sculpture, and architectural superstructure. Healey-Dilkes’s conservation work in the column spans the gulf between historical conservation and art conservation. In such a colossal work of reproduced architectural sculpture, set within a purpose-built gallery designed to house such an object, where does the artwork end and the architecture begin? This is a must-listen for anyone interested in issues of material conservation and authenticity. This conversation was recorded virtually in December 2020.
Source by Columbia GSAPP
