In the News

Art replicas from the Met go on display in Taipei

Met curator Charles Little explains the artistic and educational significance of sculptural casts Nov. 19 in Taipei. (Courtesy of MoNTUE)

• Publication Date：11/20/2012
• Source： Taiwan Today

Plaster casts of 11 important European sculptures from the 12th to 19th centuries collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are on display at the Museum of National Taipei University of Education (MoNTUE).

“Although these works are replicas, they are an important bridge,” Charles Little, curator of the Met’s Department of Medieval Art and the Cloisters, said Nov. 19 at a news conference in Taipei. “More than 100 years ago the museum commissioned a huge number of plaster casts of sculptural art, mainly from cathedrals built in the Medieval to early Renaissance periods in northern Europe, France and Italy,” he explained.

“The purpose was to make these artworks more readily available for research, appreciation and education.”

Lin Mun-lee, planning director of the university museum, said the casts are museum-quality reproductions. “From the point of view of art education and aesthetic appreciation, they’re as valuable as the originals.”

In 2006, when Lin was director of the National Palace Museum, she negotiated the Met’s donation of over 100 of the castings to NTUE, where she taught. Upon returning to the university as a professor, she spearheaded the building of the museum, with the Met replicas serving as the foundation of the institution’s collections.

The 11 casts now on exhibit were restored with a grant from the Su Tien-chai Foundation, with a 12th work, Michelangelo’s “Day,” from a Medici tomb in Florence, scheduled to go on display in April.

The MoNTUE is the first in Asia to receive casts from the Met, Little said. Lin added that restoration work will continue, together with exchanges of personnel, as part of the collaboration between the two museums.

Little will wrap up a related series of lectures Nov. 23, speaking on “Metropolitan Gothic: Art at the Met Museum and the Cloisters.” (THN)