While following the issue of digital documentation, reproduction and in particular its use to record at risk cultural heritage I was very interested to attend a conference and workshop event at the V&A in early December, which discussed the uses of digital reproduction in heritage protection. The workshop was part of the museum's Culture in [...]
Having been linking articles and writing on the subject of virtual reconstruction https://www.biancamadden.com/bamyian-buddhas, replicas https://www.biancamadden.com/tutankhamun-tomb-reconstruction/, and 3D digital recording https://www.biancamadden.com/digital-archaeology/ on this blog, this recent article from The Art Newspaper by Robert Bevan, author of The Destruction of Memory, seems important to include. It puts these various elements together and very eloquently debates the issues [...]
The search for a hidden tomb behind a wall of Tutankhamun's burial chamber: Tutankhamun's Tomb: Evidence Grows for Hidden Chamber, last week resulted in the announcement by Egypt's antiquities minister Mamdouh Eldamaty that there is an 'approximately 90 percent' chance that there is 'another chamber, another tomb' behind the burial chamber. The group carrying out [...]
Further to the earlier posts on visual interpretations: Bamiyan Buddhas, and Virtual Restoration, as well as the recent news coverage about the tomb, a piece about the reconstruction of the Tomb of Tutankhamun seems apposite. This project was started in 2009, and is now complete, with the facsimile of the tomb reconstructed next to [...]
The Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greece exhibition at the British Museum contained many beautiful pieces. Two of the most striking also stood out as having interesting stories, which related to the application of research, conservation and restoration. One was the Munich Doryphoros (pictured above) which is actually a bronze reconstruction of Polyclitus' lost [...]
Having been writing about light projections and the 'restoration' of objects through laser projection: Virtual Restoration, I see the technology has just been used in a one off projection of the destroyed Buddhas of Bamyian. While clearly a virtual reproduction is no substitute for a destroyed artifact, the use could have a place in reclaiming and [...]
Several years ago I was involved in the conservation work at the Neues Museum in Berlin, which was undertaken as part of the major work on the building before it reopened in 2009. The museum had been closed since 1939, and had been heavily damaged in bombing during the second world war, it was [...]
I came across these articles when I was interested in finding out more about the 'restoration' of Rothko wall paintings, now on display at Harvard Museum Gallery, which was carried out entirely by using light. This restoration was totally non-invasive; the appearance of faded and fugitive pigments (the paintings contained a lot of the light-sensitive [...]
This was a project in the summer 2014 with Tobit Curteis Associates on the conservation on the upper part of a painting from the 1940s. It was part of a larger project to preserve and reinstate the medieval church of St Martin's in Bilborough, Nottingham. The painting, an Annunciation with the figures of Mary [...]
