A Museum of Fakes
I once watched a story on CBS Sunday Morning about a British artist whose studio was creating nearly perfect copies of some of the world’s greatest works of art. I forget a lot of the details, but I remember being vaguely uneasy about the concept. Should great works be reproduced in such a manner? Does that somehow diminish the original? Will the special experience of seeing a unique masterpiece be lost if there are indistinguishable copies circulating around the world? I didn’t know how I felt, but was a little unsettled. I never did make up my mind, but an encounter just a day after arriving in London gave me another perspective.
One of the first museums we wanted to visit in London was the Victoria and Albert. In my visits here, I had never been. With its emphasis on art and design, the collections range from paintings and sculpture, to textiles, clothing, cars, furniture, books and pretty much anything else. Like the Natural History Museum next door, seeing the building itself is worth the visit. We wandered through rooms of paintings and religious altar pieces, Shakespeare folios and silver collections, and Asian rugs and Islamic art. We stopped for tea and scones at one of the ornate cafés.
Reaching one end of the building, a left turn took us to a walkway one floor above an enormous gallery. It was full of treasures. From our vantage point, we could look down on countless Renaissance sculptures, effigies from tombs of medieval royalty, armor and shields, elaborate carved church doors and religious art. To the right we could see a full-sized replica of Michelangelo’s David. The left side was dominated by Trajan’s Column. The column is in two pieces. Although the room reaches over 80 feet from the floor to the glass ceilings, the column is so large that even this room couldn’t accommodate its size. Both halves could barely fit.
We had stumbled on the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert. The room was full of fakes.
The Cast Courts date back to the mid-1800’s. The museum started collecting reproductions in order to give its patrons the full scope of the history and breadth of the world’s art treasures. It was considered a superior method of study compared to drawings. At a time when travel was difficult, the Courts brought copies of art and architecture from around the globe together under one roof, offering an encyclopedia of international decorative styles.
The David was a gift to Queen Victoria from the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Victoria donated it to the museum in 1857. Trajan’s Column commemorates Trajan’s successful campaigns against the Dacians around the year 100 AD and still stands today in the Roman Forum. The casts were made in the 1860’s and when first acquired by the museum, the ceilings could not accommodate their size. The height of the current cast court was designed in 1873 specifically to fit the column pieces.
While these pieces command your eye as soon as you enter, the gallery contains a treasure at every turn. It takes a while to even notice another Michelangelo masterpiece, Moses, sitting quietly in a corner. Ghiberti’s Gate of Paradise sit in another section. Walking the floor, dwarfed by this collection, it’s overwhelming and fascinating. While technology gives us the ability to virtually visit pretty much anywhere and anything, it doesn’t replace seeing them in person. Knowing these are replicas doesn’t diminish the experience of seeing them, and having the luxury of seeing so many in one place, and in full scale, is a treat. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to see originals, but seeing this collection was an experience I didn’t expect and truly enjoyed. Maybe the Victorians had it right. A room of fakes has its value.