Laocoön cast, on loan from the Met, to be repaired
The cast of the Laocoön statue located in the North Lounge in Campion Student Center was discovered broken around 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 12. Public Safety arrived and sealed off the area so the situation could be evaluated.
Since the room had been empty from 10 a.m. on, Public Safety used the security footage from the hallways to determine who had been in the room throughout the day and the last time someone saw the cast undamaged.
“In the course of the investigation a student came forward and admitted to being involved,” said Anderson, who declined to name the student.
St. Joe’s received the Laocoön cast in 1999 from a partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which loaned the university a collection of 41 casts.
In addition to the North Lounge, the casts are located in Toland Hall, the Francis A. Drexel Library and off-campus storage.
“There are not that many collections of great plaster casts in America, so I was really happy to get these,” said Carmen Croce, director of the Saint Joseph’s University Press and curator of the University Art Collection.
The Laocoön cast and Michelangelo’s Bacchus and Faun have been in the North Lounge for about 10 years. Croce said this was never the best location for the casts although it allowed people to view them.
“The alternative was not to have students have access to them,” Croce said. “Faculty have used them. I thought it was much better that they be out, even if they were in harm’s way, than if they be in storage.”
While Croce was upset to hear that the cast was broken, after evaluating the damage, he realized that it can be fixed.
Ultimately Croce plans to remove the casts from the North Lounge, not because of the damage, but because of the opportunity to have them restored and put on display at The Barnes Foundation.
“We actually have a really good record here,” Croce said. “We have had very little damage over the years.”
Anderson said Public Safety is finalizing the investigation and will issue a final report in the near future.
“It is important that we brought some closure to it,” Anderson said. “Otherwise it would have been frustrating not to know exactly what happened.”