We all like to pretend that no-one touches the things in museums. Fact is, like it or not, people do. We have been working with ECA Postgraduate student Morgan Kinne for a little over a year to find a way for her to fingerprint parts of the ECA Cast Collection. We eventually found a solution that in no way harmed the casts and Morgan began dusting earlier this month. I’m delighted to say that this worked extremely well, as these images show. Morgan says of the project:

“I recently carried out a project in the sculpture court that involved myself dusting three of ECA’s plaster casts – Spinario, Dying Gaul and Castor and Pollux – for fingerprints. The prints reveal a part of the statues’ history that has gone unnoticed and stand as a record of the interactions between people and these statues and reveal a relationship between the art students and the art historical objects.”

The Cast Collection at ECA was originally used for the purposes of formal drawing instruction at the College. While this is not the case today, projects like Morgan’s, and also Krijn de Koning’s Land, utilise the collection in exactly the same way – to support teaching and provide inspiration.