Casts and copies

There was an exhibition at the National Gallery in London last year, of fakes and forgeries in art over the ages. It was an exhibition that prompted all sorts of questions about authenticity, disputed authorship, and techniques for making copies and fakes -- as well as for identifying them -- it's a fascinating subject. But what about an exhibition of authorised copies of artworks? What is an authorised copy? Well, at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at Melbourne University, the new exhibition is Casts and Copies: Ancient and Classical Reproductions. The curator is Andrew Jamieson. Andrew's also a lecturer in the Centre for Classics and Archeology at Melbourne University, and an archeologist himself.