Museum of Classical Archaeology

The Museum of Classical Archaeology sits on the Sidgwick Site of the University of Cambridge, inside the Faculty of Classics. Founded in 1884, it moved to its present purpose-built gallery in 1982. The museum belongs to the University of Cambridge Museums group of eight sites. Its collection centres on plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. Among the casts are replicas of the Laocoön and His Sons, the Farnese Hercules, the Barberini Faun and the Charioteer of Delphi. The Peplos Kore, a brightly painted cast of a young woman from the Acropolis, stands out as the best-known piece. A 1975 experiment recreated the original colours on a second cast to show how Greek statues once looked. The museum also keeps many sherds and epigraphic squeezes in storage. Visitors find a long gallery lined with casts and changing exhibitions. Recent shows have paired classical sculpture with contemporary art, such as Tom de Freston’s Poiesis. His works, shown alongside the casts, explore difficult pregnancies through figures inspired by Titian. The room itself is plain and well-lit, letting the white plaster casts and modern paintings speak clearly.