This seems like a smarter way to display this column because it's actually not at all far off from how this column was meant to be displayed! If you walk through Rome now, sure, the column stands in the middle of a what looks like a huge, empty forum, but the Forum of Trajan was originally FULL of buildings. See, for example, this plan:
The column (3) is set in between the Propylon (1), the Greek and Latin libraries (2), and the Basilica Ulpia (4), all four of which were multi-story structures. From any of these buildings, you would have been able to get up high and look at the column up close, like in this reconstruction:
Also! Cast collections where not as rare and unusual as the Wikipedia article on the V&A cast court implies: during the late 18th and 19th centuries, it used to be very common to find museums with large collections of casts of classical sculptures. These objects were used for teaching, and YES you could be more playful with them, because they weren't originals. Unfortunately, many of these collections were scattered or destroyed during the twentieth century, making the V&A's collection rare due to its remarkable state of preservation.
Here's a short bibliography on cast collections if you want to read more:
Alexandridis, Annetta, and Lorenz Winkler-HoraÄek, eds. Destroy the Copy â Plaster Cast Collections in the 19thâ20th Centuries: Demolition, Defacement, Disposal in Europe and Beyond. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022.
Basile, Joseph. âFacsimile and Originality: Changing Views of Classical Casts in Arts Education and Art History.â The International Journal of the Arts in Society: Annual Review 8 (2014): 11â30.
Beard, Mary. âCasts and Cast-Offs: The Origins of the Museum of Classical Archaeology.â Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 39 (1993): 1â29.
Born, Pamela. âThe Canon Is Cast: Plaster Casts in American Museum and University Collections.â Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America 21, no. 2 (2002): 8â13.
Frederiksen, Rune, and Eckart Marchand, eds. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010.
McNutt, James K. âPlaster Casts after Antique Sculpture: Their Role in the Elevation of Public Taste and in American Art Instruction.â Studies in Art Education 31, no. 3 (1990): 158â67.
Nichols, Marden Fitzpatrick. âPlaster Cast Sculpture: A History of Touch.â Archaeological Review 21, no. 2 (2006): 114â30.
Payne, Emma M. âCasting a New Canon: Collecting and Treating Casts of Greek and Roman Sculpture, 1850-1939.â The Cambridge Classical Journal 65 (2019): 113â49.
Payne, Emma M. Casting the Parthenon Sculptures from the Eighteenth Century to the Digital Age. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
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