The Future of the Antique: Interpreting the Sculptural Canon

This conference marks 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).

The original edition was a landmark study that established a canonical list of ninety-five ancient sculptures that were widely admired, collected, and copied between c. 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.

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.

A core aim of this event is to foster dialogue across generations, traditions, and methodologies of scholarship.

Organised by Adriano Aymonino (University of Buckingham) & Kathleen Christian (Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance, Humboldt University of Berlin)

Supported by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Center for Palladian Studies in America; Trinity Fine Art; Istituto Italiano di Cultura