Monuments in motion: exhibiting the full-scale replicas from the Barcelona School collection, 1835-1929

Abstract

Antoni Cellers (1775–1835), architect and founder in 1817 of the first architectural class in the Barcelona Academy of Fine Arts, spent the last years of his life redrawing the ruins of the Temple of Hercules. Following his steps, Elias Rogent (1821–1897) and Lluis Domènech i Montaner (1849–1923) used the scientific trip to catalog the unknown Catalan heritage as a medium for teaching and disseminating historical architecture. Arabic, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance styles were displayed in the Models Room at the Barcelona School of Architecture in a universal atmosphere. The Philadelphia World's Fair (1876), the Spanish Monumental Art Exhibition (1904), the National Salon of Architecture in Madrid and Barcelona (1911, 1916), and The Art of Spain in the Barcelona International Exhibition (1929) defined thresholds from where to interpret the afterlife of models through exhibitions. As Marco Frascari (1945–2013) pointed out in “The Tell-the-Tale Detail,” models support the development of the narrative sense of details. The Barcelona casts collection teaches us an anachronistic lesson: monuments and their representations are in motion. This chapter aims at analyzing the documents, books, catalogs, and exhibitions that illuminate the afterlife of collections, fostering future imaginings beyond their original contexts.