A Museum not-Museum: a Historical Plaster Cast Collection at the University of Urbino (Italy)

At the University of Urbino, in the 18th century Palazzo Albani, is preserved an exiguous but prestigious collection of historical plaster casts mostly derived from classical sculptures. All of them, but five pieces, were acquired around the half of the 19th century by the Fine Arts Institute of the Marche region, which was founded at Urbino in 1861. The casts had didactic purposes and were used as models for drawing exercises until the half of the 20th century, when they were not more used as medium in the artistic training and consequently were forgotten in the storage of the Fine Arts Institute. Nevertheless, since the 1970’s around forty pieces from the original collection knew a second life after their transferring to the Archaeological Institute of the University, where they startee to be used again for didactic workshops and seminars on classical art, and were also included among the artistic attractions of the city center thanks to their arrangement as a ‘museum’. Today such public engagement of the ‘museum’ continues and many activities are promoted in order to disseminate the knowledge of this cultural heritage. But the 'Museo dei gessi' at the University of Urbino is not a real museum. It never had a formal statute of foundation, the propriety of the casts remains to the Institute of Fine Arts, and the ordinary management, without financial resources, can’t satisfy all the necessary services to its everyday life. Consequently, the opposite face of the annual events promoted in and on the ‘museum’ (conferences, seminars, performances, exhibitions etc.) and the appreciation of them by visitors and spectators is a long list of lacks and failings (e.g. appropriate lightning system, opening and maintenance services, video surveillance system, monitoring of the microclimate etc.).