Plaster Casts, Peepshows, and a Play: Lorado Taft’s Humanized Art History for America’s Schoolchildren

Abstract

i suppose you realize, as i do, how few of our school children have had the privilege of seeing even casts of the masterpieces of ancient art? They never see the sculptures of the Parthenon, the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Victory of Samothrace, the Venus of Melos, the augustus Caesar, the works of Donatello, the achievements of Michelangelo. The same is true of our university students—thousands of them. They hear endless talk about these things as the recognized treasures of civilization, the inheritance of the ages, but they never see them. . . . We . . . used to be familiar with casts in our art museums, for they once had fine collections and exhibited them in proud array. They have disappeared and are now packed deep in storage vaults or guarded by embattled student easels in the classroom.1