Comments on: A Curator Answers: Substituting Artworks http://lacma.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/a-curator-answers-substituting-artworks/ Fri, 17 May 2013 06:00:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: frenchy but chic http://lacma.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/a-curator-answers-substituting-artworks/#comment-690 Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:25:05 +0000 http://lacma.wordpress.com/?p=3993#comment-690 Actually, the Musée des Antiquités Nationales in Saint Germain-en-Laye (FR) exhibits a replica of the Venus de Brassempouy (the original is deemed too fragile for display and is kept in storage) and a fac-simile of the Lascault paintings (original cave is closed to the public). And in contemporary art the practice of building exhibition copies is pretty common. Jeff Wall’s Dead Troops Talk exhibited at the “Face à l’Histoire” show at the Pompidou Center in 1996 was an exhibition copy, also many Smithson’s installations tend to be partially or entirely reconstructed works. Same with every retrospective of Kurt Schiwtters where modern-day reconstructions of the famed Merzbau are always shown.

While this doesn’t mean that “museum put copies on the wall while the original work travels”, the practice of exhibiting replicas/copies or fac-simile of works too fragile to be exhibited or that are no longer extant is fairly common in museums.

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