Enfilade

From Eventbrite:

The Future of the Antique: Interpreting the Sculptural Canon

Institute of Classical Studies, Senate House and Warburg Institute, London, 10–12 December 2025

Organized by Adriano Aymonino and Kathleen Christian

Celebrating the publication of the new, expanded edition of Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny’s seminal Taste and the Antique (3 vols, Harvey Miller/Brepols, 2024), this conference explores the interpretation and reception of classical sculpture.

The original edition of Taste and the Antique was a landmark study that established a canonical list of ninety-five ancient sculptures that were widely admired, collected, and copied between 1500 and 1900. It traced how these works—from the Apollo Belvedere to the Laocoön—shaped artistic taste, collecting practices, and artistic discourse by defining a classical aesthetic and pedagogy. As one of the most influential texts in the history of art history, Taste and the Antique has profoundly shaped scholarship and curatorial practice on the reception of ancient sculpture. The revised three-volume edition of 2024 substantially updates the original text with recent research. It broadens the discussion of the reception of the classical canon, incorporates decades of intervening scholarship, and brings the conversation into the realm of contemporary art, opening new perspectives on the afterlives of Greek and Roman sculpture. Taking the new edition as a point of departure, the conference assesses the state of the field, explores emerging methodologies, and considers future directions. It aims to foster dialogue across generations, traditions, and methodologies of scholarship.

Sessions will address how classical statues shaped visual culture beyond replication, including:
• Shaping and Transmitting the Canon | Examining the establishment, radical alteration, and dissolution of the sculptural canon in the early modern era.
• The Canon and the Body in the Age of Empire | Exploring the role of classical statuary in the conception of ‘proportionate’ and ‘disproportionate’ bodies, in the representation of non-European populations, and in colonial educational and social policies.
• Restoration and Display | Considering reconfigurations of the antique and notions of authenticity; situating the antique within modern museum contexts.
• Changing and Rethinking Canons | Rethinking the antique within modern and postmodern theoretical frameworks and practices.

The conference is organised by Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham) and Kathleen Christian (Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Humboldt University of Berlin). It is supported by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Center for Palladian Studies in America; Trinity Fine Art; and Istituto Italiano di Cultura.

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6.00  Doors open

6.20  Introduction — Katherine Harloe (Director, Institute of Classical Studies)

6.30  Keynote
• Salvatore Settis (Accademico dei Lincei) — Only Connect: Dionysus and Christ

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10:00  Registration

10.30  Introduction — Adriano Aymonino (The University of Buckingham) and Kathleen Christian(Census-Humboldt University of Berlin)

10.45  Session 1 | Shaping and Transmitting the Canon
Chair: Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies)
• An Antiquity of Plants and Animals? Towards a Non-Human Canon — Katharina Bedenbender (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
• Piranesi and the Classical Body — Clare Hornsby(British School at Rome)
• Art, Historiography, and Connoisseurship: The Specimens of Antient Sculpture (1809) — Vivien Bird (The University of Buckingham)

12.00  Lunch break

2.00  Session 2 | The Canon and the Body in the Age of Empire
Chair: Caroline Vout (University of Cambridge)
• Living Antiquities? Anthropological/Travel Imagery and the Sculptural Canon in the Late Eighteenth Century — Annette Kranen (Universität Bern)
• The Bodies of Gods: Drawing from the Antique in Colonial India — Eva Ehninger (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
• A Black Apollo? John Quincy Adams Ward’s The Freedman and the Belvedere Torso — Anna Degler (Freie Universität Berlin)
• Between Plaster and Stone: Reframing the Classical Canon in Bourbon New Spain — Rebecca Yuste (Columbia University)

3.35  Tea and coffee break

4.05  Introducing the Updated Census — Kathleen Christian(Census-Humboldt University of Berlin)

4.25  Introducing the New Edition of Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique — Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham) and Eloisa Dodero (Capitoline Museums, Rome)

5.00  Keynote Introduction — Bill Sherman (Director, Warburg Institute)

5.10  Keynote
• The Invention of the Classical — Nicholas Penny (Former Director of the National Gallery, London)

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Warburg Institute – Auditorium

10.00  Registration

10.30  Introduction — Adriano Aymonino (The University of Buckingham) and Kathleen Christian (Census-Humboldt University of Berlin)

10.45  Session 3 | Restoration and Display
Chair: Chiara Piva (Sapienza Università di Roma)
• Zooming In: The Social Lives of Statues — Jeffrey Collins (Bard Graduate Center)
• Zooming Out: Restoration as Taste — Elizabeth Bartman (Former President of the Archaeological Institute of America)
• Restoration, De- and Re-restoration of Ancient Sculptures in the Munich Glyptothek, Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century — Astrid Fendt (Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart)

11.45  Tea and coffee break

12.15  Session 3 | Restoration and Display, continued
• The Braccio Nuovo in the Vatican Museums: Display and Restorations of the Antique in the Nineteenth Century — Eleonora Ferrazza (Vatican Museums) and Claudia Valeri (Vatican Museums)
• Revealing Restorations: Assessing the Presentation and Reception of Restored Roman Sculptures from the Torlonia Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago — Lisa Ayla Çakmak (Art Institute of Chicago) and Katharine A. Raff (Art Institute of Chicago)

1.30  Lunch break

3.00  Session 4 | Changing and Rethinking Canons
Chair: Flora Dennis (Warburg Institute)
• The Head of an Etruscan: Alternative Antiquities and the Physiognomies of Modern Sculpture — Joanna Fiduccia (Yale University)
• The Fragmented Marble Body: Surrealism, Political Phantoms, and the Canon Recast — Domiziana Serrano (Université Jean Monnet -Saint-Étienne)
• From the Cortile to the Cosmos: Interpreting the Sculptural Canon in the Context of US Space Travel — Tilman Schreiber (Friedrich Schiller University Jena)

4.15  Tea and coffee break

4.45  Closing Paper | Historiographic Perspectives on the Canon
• Fear Revealed: Jacob Burckhardt on Classical Anthropomorphism and Demonic Hybridity — Mateusz Kapustka (Freie Universität Berlin – Zurich)

5.05  Final Remarks