The Democratic Future of Museums

Reflections on a Participatory Project Named “gipSMK - The Royal Cast Collection Goes to Town”

(“gips” means “plaster” in Danish)

Henrik Holm, Phd., Curator Statens Museum for Kunst / The Royal Cast Collection

henrik.holm@smk.dk

Still from the documentary on ”gipSMK” (YouTube)

The (Old) Usual Suspects

Winckelmann

Hegel

Kant

Copy of the Apollo Belvedere, a favourite of artists for 400 years

The performance of Western Sovereignty

Evolution of the Art, Freedom, Mankind, and Spirit as it shows at the Royal Cast Collection

The End of History: Winckelmann dislikes his contemporary Baroque art, and laments the loss of the past through the sigh of the Laocoon

Ca. 580 BC - ca. 450 BC - 1st. Cent. BC – 1st. Cent. AD - 1501-4

Julius Lange (1838-1896), the Cast Collection’s first Curator

“Non-European civilizations such as the Japanese worship nature, but Europe is Europe because … we worship Man, our invention and our favourite.”

Once a happy performance: convention, utterances, and completion came together

Plaster cast of the ”Apollon Belvedere”

and ”The Parnassus” by Anton Raphael Mengs,

1761

A ”White’s Only” - collection: White Casts on Display in a Warehouse Build to Store the Goods Provided by Slaves

Casts of Michelangelo’s ”Slaves” and the ”Laocoon-group”

Performativity turning bad in Modernity

The Situation

• Copies are out: only original artworks wanted

• Sculpture on bases are unwanted in ”the expanded field”

• Antiquity and tradition is just ”old hat”

1966: Excluded from History1984-2002: A Period of Interest

2002- in Jeopardy

What casts do: they perform “stylized repetition of acts” / “stylization of the body” = creates the idea of

gender and identity (Judith Butler)

”gipSMK- The Royal Cast Collection goes to Town”

The Dancers Recieve their Casts

High School Students Preparing Installations Involving the Casts

Dancers ”taking in” the casts

A Democratic Future for Museums?

POSITIVE

Students of Contemporary Dance

Highschool students

University students, DK + Yale

Danish Agency for Culture

Museum Conferences

NEGATIVE

Colleagues

Professional Dancers

Non-western emigrants to Denmark

The Press

ON THEIR WAY IN

Art Academy Students

Students of Architecture

Professional Artists

PERHAPS?

SMK?Society?Democracy?