The Statue Industry of Beauty:
Creating a Roman Princess, Then and Now
Institute of Classical Archaeology, Museum of the University of Tübingen (MUT)
Cast Collection of Schloss Hohentübingen, 5 February - 10 April 2026
In the Roman empire from the reign of Augustus to the third century CE, more portraits of women stood in public spaces than at any other moment in history. These portrait statues not only demonstrate the importance of women in society, but they also provide a visual guide to social expectations. Our exhibition, The Statue Industry of Beauty, looks at how the portrait statues of women belonging to Rome’s first imperial family, the Julio-Claudians, were designed, made, and distributed throughout the empire.
The exhibition presents versions of these statues in different media – marble, plaster, plastic — and made by different techniques – free-hand sculpting, casting in molds, and 3D printing. Offering new insights into the aesthetics, politics, and cultural heritage of the early empire, these objects ask viewers to reflect on artisanry and market value as well as the fundamental problems of female representation made for a male audience.
The volume accompanying the exhibition published by Habelt-Verlag is available in full Open Access and can be downloaded here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18711467
The exhibition “The Statue Industry of Beauty: Creating a Princess, then and now” (Vom Marmor zum Pixel: Reproduktionen römischer Kaiserinnen), hosted by the he Museum Alte Kulturen (MUT University of Tübingen) at Schloss Hohentübingen, is a collaborative project involving international institutions. Conceived by members of RESP project at the University of Verona and faculty members at the Institut für Klassische Archäologie at Tübingen together with The Hispanic Society of America, New York and the Glyptothek in Munich, it has received important contributions from Fordham University in NY, John Cabot University in Rome, Freiburg University, the Museo archeologico dei Campi Flegrei e Castello di Baia and the British Museum. Further information about the exhibition and the museum can be found in the flyer and on the websites:
3D models
Videos
Exhibition Video
Making Of the Exhibition