It may seem strange to us that any college would anxiously work to acquire a collection of copies of art, rather than the originals. Yet, in November of 1893, Lucius Fisher, Jr. pledged $5,000 to Beloit College—a substantial amount of money at the time—to purchase a set of plaster casts that reproduced ancient marbles.

Photo: Wright Museum of Art

Lost forever: Beloit’s plaster cast of Hermes/Mercury, shown in the Wright Art Hall, circa 1930.

Now known as the Fisher Collection of Ancient Greek Sculpture, the set had been commissioned by the Greek government for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It consisted of 112 plaster casts selected by Dr. Waldstein, director of the American School in Athens; he chose works that would highlight the major artistic developments in Greek marble sculpture from the archaic period to the high classical period. Plaster casts were taken directly from the marbles and thus were identical to the originals, both in size and form. The original marbles can now be found in some of the major museums of Athens: the National Archaeological Museum, the Acropolis Museum, and the Kerameikos Museum.

The plaster copies that eventually came to Beloit were displayed in the Anthropological Building at the World’s Fair at the center of a series of exhibits that attempted to narrate the progress of man through various archaeological and ethnological displays.

The College was able to acquire the casts largely through the efforts of one of Beloit’s first professors, Joseph Emerson, and his wife, Helen Brace Emerson. The Emersons were committed to fostering fine arts education at the College. He taught classes in Greek, and she was instrumental in establishing the College’s Art Hall with donations of photographs and ceramics from her personal art collection.

Photo by: Greg Anderson

Beloit seniors Alex Marr and Carolyn Gennari look at a cast exhibited in the Wright Museum of Art this fall.

The Emersons visited the World’s Fair with a particular interest in the Fine Arts Hall, where they hoped to identify and purchase art for the College. They acquired at least three paintings, including a large oil painting by Olaf Arborelius, now in the Wright Museum of Art’s collection.

In October, the Emersons learned that the Greek plaster casts would be sold at the closing of the fair, and they viewed the collection as having great artistic and educational value. Greek art, in the words of Professor Emerson, was the fount “from which all modern plastic art had sprung,” and students would cultivate grace through the study of ancient Greek art and gain “an artistic development of body and mind.”

With only a couple of weeks until the fair closed, the Emersons worked quickly to solicit funds to purchase the casts, but a month later, they remained unsuccessful. It wasn’t until November that Lucius Fisher, Jr. stepped forward and donated the entire sum. Fisher was born in Beloit and attended the College. He dedicated this extraordinary gift in remembrance of his father, Lucius Fisher, Sr., a charter member of the Beloit College board of trustees.

Photo by: Greg Anderson

This magnificent plaster cast of a funerary monument from the fourth century BCE remains in Beloit’s collection.

The casts were formally presented on June 20, 1894, in a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the College’s inception. This event was memorialized in an elaborate publication titled The Fisher Collection of Antique Greek Sculpture: Proceedings at the Presentation to Beloit College. Pomp and circumstance surrounded the dedication ceremony and included speeches by President Eaton, Fisher, Professor Emerson, and S.T. Merrill, principal of the Beloit Seminary, the predecessor institution to Beloit College. The grand organ in the new chapel played a Greek aria that had been transposed from the tune of a Greek shepherd’s pipe, created specifically for the occasion. In his speech, Emerson extolled the educational value of the collection. He, like many educated people of the time, believed that Greece had given birth to the idea of a liberal education, and the fine arts were an essential part of that education. Moreover, he felt the art of ancient Greece exemplified the finest extant works of the ancient world.

Beloit College was not unique in believing that plaster casts of famous statuary were essential pedagogical materials and that a familiarity with the famous Greek and Roman works was required for a proper education. This interest can be traced back as early as the 16th century, when princes and kings of Europe spent fortunes to acquire plaster copies of famous Roman marbles and then cast them in bronze.

Photos: Wright Museum of Art

Three views of the Fisher Collection in the Wright Museum of Art before renovations displaced many of the casts. At the top is the South Gallery; the middle and bottom photos show the two-story center courtyard gallery before a painting studio was added to the second floor.

The European practice of collecting copies of famous works was readily adopted in the United States where, by the end of the 19th century, plaster casts formed the core of many college and museum collections. Plaster cast collections provided people with the opportunity to view great works of art that otherwise would have been inaccessible except to the wealthy and venturesome traveler. Plaster replicas of masterpieces by Phidias and Praxiteles could be found in many American galleries, and one did not need to travel to Rome to see the Laocoön or to Athens to see the sculptures from the Parthenon. These copies could also be found on college campuses like Beloit’s, where they were used as models for students to copy and seen as acceptable substitutes by which students could study the great works of art. Professor Emerson is described as holding classes amidst the plaster casts with these sculptures overshadowing the students. Little thought was given to the fact that these were not original marbles.

The Greek Casts at Beloit

When the World’s Fair collection of plaster casts arrived in Beloit in 1894, they were installed in the newly established Art Hall, what is now South College. They would remain there until 1930, when they were moved to their new home in the Wright Museum of Art. Today 14 of the original Fisher casts still stand in the hallways of the Wright Museum, just as they did when they were originally installed in 1930. Several sections of the Parthenon frieze, including seated gods and hydria-carrying maidens, are suspended over the doorways of the second floor offices, and two classical Greek grave steles—gravestones—frame the doorway into the south gallery on the main floor.

Most of the plaster casts were originally displayed in the central courtyard and in the south gallery of the Wright Museum. In contrast to the hallways, these galleries have undergone significant alteration since the 1930s, and the casts that were once displayed there did not fare as well.

Photo by: Greg Anderson

Head of Medusa

In the late 1940s, under the direction of Professor of Art Frank Boggs, the studio art program began to flourish, replacing the more classical tradition of art education that employed the plaster casts. Boggs wanted to invigorate art studio classes by exhibiting more experimental art in the gallery spaces that had originally been reserved for the plaster casts. The large sky-lit courtyard that had displayed the plaster casts in the 1930s was remodeled to create an upper-level painting studio and a lower-level exhibition gallery. In the south gallery, the plaster casts were removed to accommodate a rotating calendar of exhibitions.

Clear documentation of what happened to the casts is missing, but according to O.V. Shaffer’50, director of the Wright Art Center at the time, most of the plaster sculpture was moved into the basement of the now-defunct Scoville Hall, where it was soon lost when water pipes burst and flooded the basement. A few pieces were rumored to have made it into neighborhood homes and gardens. In 1960, an inventory of the collection by Beloit College student Steve Nelson’61 indicated that the collection had dwindled to about 35 pieces.

Photo by: Greg Anderson

Both the Head of Medusa (above right) and the East Frieze of the Parthenon were shown in the Wright Museum this fall, part of an exhibit called A World in a Windy City: The Chicago Columbian Exposition. John and Sally Burris are sponsoring the East Frieze restoration, which is set for 2008.

The significant losses within the Fisher Collection were not unique; plaster cast collections across the United States suffered similar fates. The Greek government sent a collection of 156 plaster casts to the 1915 Exposition in San Francisco. Today, the University of California-Berkeley houses the 25 remaining pieces from that collection.

Changing attitudes towards plaster casts began, not in the 1940s, but as early as the first decades of the 20th century. As the United States and its museums became wealthier and able to collect real works of art, a growing opinion arose that authentic aesthetic experiences could only be achieved by encountering the original, not the replica.

Over the last several decades, there has been a dramatic rise in interest in plaster casts, particularly because of their pedagogical value. Beginning in the mid-1980s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art began donating pieces from its extensive plaster cast collection to schools and museums in the New York area, such as the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America, the Queens Museum of Art, and George Mason University. The Institute of Classical Architecture responded by restoring the plaster casts and then reintroducing them into studio art drawing classes.

Beloit College is fortunate to have its own collection of sculpture, a total of 25 plaster casts. Most of these pieces belong to the original Fisher Collection, while a few, such as Discobolus (The Discus Thrower) and the Dying Lioness, were purchased by the College in the late 1800s. These works of art provide students with an opportunity to encounter ancient sculpture, not only as slides projected on a screen, but also as material objects. Because the cast sculptures offer this tangible experience, they constitute an invaluable part of the Wright’s collection.

Photo by: Greg Anderson

Discobolus (The Discus Thrower) on display in the Wright Museum, sporting an artifical green patina. Robert’61 and Marjorie Moss Fizzell’62 are sponsoring the cast’s restoration through the College’s Adopt a Cast program.

At the same time, many of them require the attention of a conservator. Over the years, the casts have been treated with a fresh coat of paint, such that many layers now cover their surfaces, blurring the finer details of these pieces. The Discus Thrower, for instance, acquired an artificial green patina when it was painted. Other pieces require additional supports and pedestals to better protect them. Following the model established by other colleges, Beloit College students will work to restore the collection of plaster casts this spring under the instruction of fine arts conservator Anton Rajer, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. New supports will be constructed, and the outer layers of paint will be removed to reveal the original plaster patina below. After they have been fully restored, the casts will be returned to their position on the walls of the Wright Museum.

The Wright Museum of Art has established an Adopt a Cast program to aid in the conservation of these pieces, and two of the plaster casts that have already been adopted will undergo restoration this spring. The Wright is also interested in gathering information about the history of the casts to fill in the gaps where the archives are silent. Alumni are encouraged to share photographs or other information pertaining to this interesting chapter of Beloit College history.

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Joy Beckman is the director of the Wright Museum of Art. She can be reached at beckmanj@beloit.edu.

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