Ancient sculptures on display at Freie Universität Berlin, May 12 through July 2, 2017

“Greek and Roman sculptures were components of religious, political, and other social practices,” says Prof. Dr. Lorenz Winkler-Horaček from the Institute of Classical Archaeology at Freie Universität Berlin, who organized the exhibition. They belonged to the furnishing of temples, outdoor plazas, villas, and palaces, among various other functions. The sculptures formed a unity with the surrounding architecture, which they influenced, while also being influenced by the surrounding buildings. This spatial connection has largely disappeared. “Nowadays, we usually view these sculptures in museums and travel separately to the locations where they stood,” says Lorenz Winkler-Horaček.

The 3D visualization of the city of Pergamon was developed by scholars at the Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus (today Cottbus-Senftenberg) under the direction of Dominik Lengyel and Catherine Toulouse in cooperation with the German Archaeological Institute, Istanbul Division, within a project sponsored from 2009 to 2012 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The project was called “The Berlin Sculpture Network – Contextualization and Translation of Ancient Sculptures.” 3D scans of selected statues in Pergamon were integrated into a model of the city. “3D visualization is a multifunctional research tool that allows the viewer to assume different points of view within the city, and to draw conclusions about the spatial interplay of sculpture and architecture,” says Dominik Lengyel. Using this tool it is possible to visually implement and test research findings about the placement of statues. Other participants were the Karlsruhe University of Applied Science and the Ancient Collections of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

SOURCE:  Freie Universität Berlin