Enfilade

From ArtHist.net and the conference website:

‘Civilizing’ the World: Classicism, Neo-Classical Sculpture, and Plaster Casts in

the Service of Imperial Powers and Post-Colonial Elites, 1780–1945

Online and in-person, Warburg Institute, University of London, 16 and 21–23 October 2026

Organized by Eckart Marchand, Katherine Harloe, and Amy Smith

This conference explores the uses of Greco-Roman and neo-classical sculpture and architecture by European colonial powers to express and consolidate their power, at home and abroad, and the continuation and adaptation of these strategies in elite nation-building in many former colonies, post-independence. Speakers from across the world will discuss the roles classical and neo-classical art fulfilled globally, addressing the deployment of classical visual culture in the service of self-presentation and as a means to dominate indigenous, subaltern and settler populations. Taking in the history of five continents, the conference is designed to bring out historical differences as well as continuities, putting existing, geographically focused approaches and global frameworks of postcolonial analysis to the test.

‘Civilizing’ the World is organized by Dr Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), Professor Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies, University of London), and Professor Amy Smith (Department of Classics, University of Reading). The conference is generously supported by the Henry Moore Foundation, Institute of Classical Studies, John Coffin Memorial Trust, University of Reading Department of Classics and School of Humanities, University of Reading and British Museum Partnership Joint Development Fund, Dino and Raffaello Tomasso, UK, Classics Beyond Borders (University of Cambridge) and the Leventis Foundation, University College London

Booking information is available here»

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Online

10.50  Welcome by Flora Dennis (Deputy Director of the Warburg Institute) and the conference organizers

11.00  Session 1 | The Representation of Imperial Power and its Discontents
Chair: Katherine Harloe
• Polina Malova (4th-year undergraduate, National Research University, Moscow) — Classical Faces of Empire: Rochette and Catherine II’s Southern Program
• Logan Douglas (PhD student, St Andrews) — The Beit Bequest and the Artifice Underpinning Settler Colonialism

12.00  Break

12.10  Session 2 | Classicism in the Philippines and Japan
Chair: Amy Smith
• Geronimo Cristobal (PhD cand, Cornell University) — The Small Museum of Empire: Plaster Casts and Artistic Formation in Colonial Manila
• Shinya Araki (Lecturer, Tama Art University, Japan) — The Uneven Acceptance of Western Art in Different Regions of Japan

13.10  Break

14.00  Session 3 | Representing State and Nation in the Post-Colonial Americas
Chair: Amara Thornton
• Mauricio Oviedo (Ass. Prof., Universidad de Costa Rica and Leonardo Santamaria Montero, PhD cand., Cornell University) — Allegories of America: Indigenous Representation, Transatlantic Artistic Networks, and Nation-Building Narratives in 19th-Century Central America
• Victoria Jiménez (PhD cand., University of Barcelona) — Civilizing through Copies: Classical Replicas, ‘Mamarrachos,’ and the Visual Politics of Nation-Building in 19th-Century Chile

15.00  Break

15.15  Session 4 | Shaping the Citizen and the Other
Chair: Maria Golovteeva
• Joseph Albanese (Ass. Prof., DePauw University, Indiana) — The Seductive Lie of Classical Pagan Sculptures in Colonial Peru
• Katie Margerison (MA, Tulane University) — Moral Bodies, Secular Virtues: Educación Física and the Idealized Citizen in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

16.15  Final Discussion

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Online and in-person, University of London, Senate House

18.00  Welcome — Flora Dennis and Katherine Harloe

18.15  Evening Session | Curatorial Perspectives on Colonial Casts and Mould Taking
Chair: David Saunders
• Eder Ignacio Arreola Ponce (Curator of the Sculpture Collection, Faculty of Art and Design, Academia de San Carlos, UNAM, Mexico City) — Neoclassicism in America: The Sculpture Collection of the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico. History, Provenance, and Tracing of a Dispersed Collection
• Iffat Azeem (Senior Research Officer, Lahore Museum) — An Empirical Curatorial Insight into the Ethnographical Heads of Schlagintweits, 1854–1858
• Veronika Tocha (Curator, Gipsformerei, SMK, Berlin) — Plaster Casting and/as Cultural Appropriation: The Politics of Reproduction

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Online and in-person, University of London

9.40  Welcome and introduction — Bill Sherman (Director of the Warburg Institute) and Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute)

10.00  Session 1 | Mexico
Chair: Claudia Zehrt
• Daniel Sobrino Ralston (CEEH Associate Curator of Spanish Paintings, National Gallery, London) — ‘Estatua digna del griego afamado’: The Plaster Cast Collection of Mexico City’s Academia de San Carlos, 1783–1803
• Elizabeth Fuentes Rojas (Prof., UNAM, Mexico) — The Continuing Influence of Neoclassicism in Mexican Altarpieces: A Symbiosis of Sculptors and Architects
• Delia Cosentino (Prof., DePaul University Chicago) — ‘Por no ser traidor a su patria’: Tlahuicole and the Making of a Mexican Spartacus

11.15  Coffee

11.45  Session 2 | Central and South Americas
Chair: Rebecca Levitan
• Maite Álvarez (Project Specialist, Getty Research Center, Los Angeles) — Classical Ideals in the Amazon: The Drawing Academy and Artistic Civilization in the Late 18th Century
• Joseph Hartman (Ass. Prof., University of Missouri-Kansas City) — Queen, Poet, Republic: The Classical and Colonial Formations of Cuban National Identity
• Edgar Ulloa (Ass. Prof., Universidad de Costa Rica) — Rethinking Post-Colonial Assumptions: The Plaster Cast Collection of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Costa Rica, 1897–1940

13.00  Lunch break
With poster session:
• Mauricio Oviedo (Ass. Prof., Universidad de Costa Rica) and Leonardo Santamaria Montero (PhD cand., Cornell University) — Allegories of America: Indigenous Representation, Transatlantic Artistic Networks, and Nation-Building Narratives in 19th-Century Central America

14.30  Session 2 | Central and South Americas
Chair: Vicky Donnellan
• Paul Niell (Prof., Florida State University) — A Rhetoric of Permanence: Neoclassical Urbanism and the Suppression of Ephemeral Architecture in the Spanish Caribbean, 1830–1898
• Fabio D’Almeida Lima Maciel (Prof., UniCamp, São Paulo) — Neo-Classical Sculpture and the Racial Politics of ‘Civilization’ in Ferdinand Pettrich’s The Dying Tecumseh

15.25  Tea and coffee

16.00  Session 3 | Representing the Colonial Power
Chair: John Tresch
• Ciarán Rua O’Neill (Research Fellow, University College Dublin) — Hibernia Improved: Architectural Sculpture, Neoclassicism, and Imperial Authority in Dublin, c. 1780–1810
• Michael Adam Smith (PhD stud., York University) — A ‘Union of Conciliation and Firmness’: John Flaxman’s Monument to Major-General Sir Barry Close

18.00 Visit and Reception, UCL Flaxman Gallery

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Online and in-person, University of London

9.30  Introduction — Amy Smith

9.40  Session 4 | Imperialism in Europe
Chair: Marianna Leszczyk
• Agnieszka Skrodzka (Ass. Prof., Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, Warsaw) — The Clash of Neo-Classicisms: The Sculpture in Warsaw against the Signs of Russian Domination in the Art of the 19th Century
• Jonatan Pérez Mostazo (Prof., University of the Basque Country (EHU) — Civilizing the Inner Barbarians: Classicism, Progress, and Basque Culture in Bilbao, 1875–1931

10.35  Coffee

11.15  Session 5 | Neoclassicism and Anthropology
Chair: Charles Burdett
• Elisabeth Décultot (Prof., Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) — Winckelmann’s Beauty Ideal and the Making of Ethnological Difference around 1800
• Aris Sarafianos (Prof., University of Ioannina) — ‘Neptune’s Breast’ and the ‘Chest’ of Wilson, the Black: Extreme Simulations, Vitality and Race in the Imperial Spectrum – Elgin Casts in Russia, 1818
• Laetitia Lai (PhD stud., Open University of the Netherlands) — Between Art and Anthropological Authenticity: The Visual Languages of Colonial Science
• Nam Huh (PhD stud., University of Loughborough) — From Colonial Life-Casting to Archival Ecology: Technologies of Visibility and Robert Zhao Renhui’s Counter-Archives

13.00  Lunch break

14.15  Session 6 | Colonialism in the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa
Chair: Sam Agbamu
• Gaia De Luca (PostDoc., Lille University) — Conquering through Construction: The Fascist Cultural and Architectural Italianisation in the Dodecanese, 1912–1943
• Khalifa Bashbash (Independent Scholar, Libya) — Archaeology as Imperial Propaganda: The Impact of Italian Colonial and Fascist Ideology on Libyan Antiquities
• Carmen Belmonte (Assistant Professor, University of Padua) — Classicism and Fascist Imperial Power in the Sculpture of Romano Romanelli
• Susan Slyomovics (Distinguished Prof. UCLA) — François-Léon Sicard and ‘Great Men’ Sculptures of French Algeria

16.40  Final Lecture
Chair: Eckart Marchand
• Lorenz Winkler-Horacek (Prof. and Curator of the Plaster Cast Collection, Freie Universität Berlin) — From Prussia to China: On the Appropriation, Rejection, and Re-Appropriation of Classical Antiquity through Plaster Casts