Mesoamerican Plaster Casts

Preservation and Rehousing Project

The Peabody Museum is steward to a rare and important collection of Mesoamerican plaster casts that were created in the late nineteenth century. The casts are very important because they preserve information from original stone carvings that has now become increasingly lost to erosion, destruction, or looters (Fash 2004a, 2004b; Jackson 2004). 

In July 2007, the Museum initiated a major preservation project to document, condition-assess, clean, and stabilize more than seven hundred and fifty of the plaster casts that comprise sculptural art and hieroglyphic writing facsimiles from monuments and buildings at more than twenty-five archaeological sites in Mesoamerica.

In the 1980smany casts were moved to a storage facility located in a large industrial building. Unfortunately, the casts were cut into sections, stacked, and stored in very poor environmental conditions, and then left for many years.

A storage room showing plaster casts stacked against the wall

Fig. 1. Old storage conditions 

Stabilization and Rehousing

The cast preservation/rehousing project was a museum- and University-wide collaboration, involving curators, collection managers and assistants, conservators, and art handlers, with support from financial, database, and information technology. The following describes conservation’s role in this project.  

 

During the first phase of the project, the Conservation team worked collaboratively with other teams and was responsible for advising on handling/moving, documenting, condition-assessing, cleaning, and stabilizing, and then rehousing plaster casts.  

 

Left in long-term storage in a very dusty, uncontrolled environment, many of the casts were extremely dirty, soiled, and damaged. From July 2007 to May 2008, the Conservation team cleaned, stabilized, documented, and rehoused more than seven hundred and fifty casts. 

 

A mesoamerican plater cast half cleaned

Fig. 2. Plaster cast # 33-16-20/285.5 partially cleaned

Treatment for Exhibition

At a later date, the curator narrowed down the selection to 167 casts that required further treatment for exhibition. This final treatment phase includes structural stabilization backing, filling, and inpainting, as well as future collaboration with the Exhibit department to design appropriate display supports.

Three staff members using a lift to realign parts of a plaster cast A plater cast after reconstruction

Fig. 3. Roosevelt Julien, Diana Medellin and Stuart Heebner bringing two sections of stelae 7 (93-27-20/C587.1 and .2) together. Fig. 4. Stelae 7 after reconstruction 

two female conservators repairing a plaster cast

Fig. 5. Diana Medellin and Christie Pohl reconstructing a plaster cast.

project team members in a large industrial building with casts

Fig. 7. Cast project team, 2007

gallery showing plaster casts

Fig. 8. “All the World is Here: the museum’s 150th anniversary exhibition showing casts currently on display

One rare cast in the Peabody collection is currently on display in “All the World is Here: the museum’s 150th anniversary exhibition. Stela 25 from Piedras Negras was defaced and scattered by looters in the 1970s, so the Peabody’s 19th century cast is the only remaining copy of the intact monument.

References

Barbara W. Fash (2004) Cast Aside: Revisiting the Plaster Cast Collections from Mesoamerica, Visual Resources, 20:1, 3-17, DOI: 10.1080/0197376042000191541