Art Forum: Dr Holly Trusted

The Making and Meaning of Plaster Casts in the Nineteenth Century
Dr Holly Trusted

Soon after the Cast Courts in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) opened in October 1873 a contemporary noted with awe, ​‘There are some impressions that can scarcely be effaced…’. That visitor experienced unique feelings of awe on first seeing the magnificent Cast Courts. Such an emotional response is still felt by many today when they enter the Courts. Can we today use these galleries to give ourselves a glimpse of the Victorian age, a theatrical sensation, and yet at the same time evoke the original Renaissance and Medieval objects which inspired these great spaces? Dr Holly Trusted, former Senior Curator of Sculpture at the V&A, discusses the contemporary relevance of casts and how we might address the great historic spaces that house casts.

Dr Holly Trusted FSA is Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the V&A, where she was previously Senior Curator of Sculpture. She was responsible for the extensive renovations of the Cast Courts there from 2010 — 2018. She has lectured and published widely on British, Spanish and German sculpture; her book on German and Central European Baroque sculpture is to be published later this year. She is co-chair and co-founder of the Public Statues and Sculpture Association, and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and is currently working on a monograph on the Spanish baroque sculptor, Luisa Roldán with Catherine Hall-van den Elsen.