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Classics Research Lab: The Baltimore Casts Project will continue work begun in Fall 2020 researching a remarkable collection of plaster casts of classical Greek and Roman sculptures, created ca. 1879 for the Peabody Institute’s art gallery. Such cast collections were a highly valued cultural resource in Europe and North America, produced for major museums, academic institutions and wealthy individuals. Because of the technical process of the cast formation, based directly upon the ancient sculptural surface, cast collections brought contact with the actual ancient artifacts into temporally and spatially distant contexts—including the burgeoning urban space of 19th century Baltimore. In Spring 2021, the Lab will continue archival/field research on the cast collection’s context, content, formation, and usage by the people of Baltimore, and its eventual disbanding. We will also begin construction of the virtual exhibition that reassembles the collection’s member objects, charting their biographies and current locations. A major dimension of the lab’s research is contextualizing the casts in Baltimore of the mid 19th to mid-20th centuries, considering different forms of access and restriction to ancient culture that were forming throughout the city and its diverse population, including who truly had access to the cast collection in Mount Vernon, and in which capacities.