Robin Whitehouse

Title	'The Excavation Process'
Year	2023
Link	Jegens & Tevens

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Through mixed conversations and reports I uncovered the hidden basement of the Academy on the 20th February 2023. Over the following months I have began to excavate areas of the piles of plaster in the basement with the intention to piece back together aspects of the smashed plaster sculptures. I estimated it to be well over 5 tones of plaster fragments and pieces that are from the copies that made up the former Gips Museum of The Royal Academy of Art the Hague.

Title	'Returning Gips collection'
Year	2023

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As a part of my graduation show I wanted to bring back together the remaining plaster collection. As a part of this I requested to loan 4 plaster sculptures that used to belong the KABK from the 1900s-1970s. In the 70s they were taken by the Allard Pierson collection to Amsterdam to save them from being destroyed. I requested to loan these pieces that used to be housed in the KABK and bring them back to where they used to stand 100 years ago. I worked with Hizkia and initiated it to take place. The figures were returned to the room where they used to stand 100 years ago and placed upon the original pedestals that I had uncovered from a hidden basement and restored to be used again. I recorded the process of them being transported, the photos are an extract from this day.

Title	'Destroyed and Unearthed'
at	Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik, Berlin, DE
Year	2024
Photographer	Clara Sartor
Link	Excavation Catalogue (PDF)

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Excavated by Robin Phoenix Whitehouse: In the 20th century, numerous important collections of casts disappeared from Europe's art academies - we are rarely informed about their destruction. Robin Phoenix Whitehouse, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (NL), has uncovered the fate of the destroyed collection of his former academy and unearthed thousands of fragments.

Title	'The Graduation Show'
Year	2023
Link	Allard Pierson

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With this project I wanted to piece together a view of the remaining plaster collection that used to be the significant feature of the Royal Academy of Art The Hague up until the 1960s.
The collection was made up of over 6000 pieces from across Europe and now only a small handful are known to remain in the academy here today. There is very little report about where the plaster collection ended up, a few pieces were saved by the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, and a few pieces remain until today in the family homes of graduates and professors from the 1960s. Articles from the 60s-80s which mention this moment are very sparse, they mention the removal and destruction of the plaster collection, but the published information doesn’t give any further view as to what happened in 1964. Through ongoing conversations I am trying to get a bigger picture of this moment of destruction in the 60s and address it today. I want to tell the story, the relational aspects that shape it along the way are what interest me. In uncovering this story, I come to see it as at a time when a lot of these stories could be lost forever if not addressed at this moment. .