4 ms·

3D scanning ought to be high on a museum’s priorities, not something that outside entities force on them.

washadjeffmad 4y ago
Artifact scanning happens, but largely it's seen as out of the scope of the curatorial responsibilities of most museums. Museums have different purposes, and few are close to as large or wealthy as the V&A or Natural History. Mostly, staff are tied up preparing for exhibits, handling outreach and marketing, working events, performing curatorial duties, and managing operations, often not exclusively. A 3D scanner of some quality starts around $6000, a laptop that can scan and process things quickly about as much, storage and hosting is anywhere from $20-40k on a 3-5 year lifecycle, and a DAM capable of managing 3D digital assets could be a few thousand a year. Now assuming you are given funding, you've got to take a person who is qualified to handle the artifacts, understands the scanning process, can assess the quality of and correct their scans, has the time and access to label the digital objects so they can be integrated by the people who manage the collections, find someone who understands how to manage the "3D parts", and suddenly you have an idea of the burden the scale of this task would place on a museum with maybe half a dozen to a dozen full time staff and several hundred or thousand artifacts. This doesn't even touch rights of artists or owners, since few museums own everything they exhibit. Even more challenging, try convincing those people that allowing a third party to own digital simulacra of their works won't somehow backfire on them.
- mavhc 4y ago
  Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    > Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever They wouldn't release it freely anyway, the copyright fees from owning the one high quality photograph of various artworks basically funds most British museums.
    - buildsjets 4y ago
      Statens Museum for Kunst (link above) has released hundreds of scans under the CC0 license.
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  Good point, and thank you for the details. It must be a lot more time-consuming than it appears at first glance. As an engineer, I really ought to know better than to make that mistake!
buildsjets 4y ago
Yes, and I greatly appreciate the efforts of the Danish Statens Museum for Kunst, for sharing great scans of many objects in their collecction, including several of the Belvedere figures. https://www.myminifactory.com/category/SMK-Statens-museum-for-Kunst-The-National-Gallery-of-Denmark https://www.myminifactory.com/category/SMK-Statens-museum-fo... But "Bust of a Philosopher or Barbarian" is my favorite, I made a large 3D print of him that I keep on my desk. https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-bust-of-a-philosopher-or-barbarian-102085 https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-bust-of-a-phil...

Artifact scanning happens, but largely it's seen as out of the scope of the curatorial responsibilities of most museums. Museums have different purposes, and few are close to as large or wealthy as the V&A or Natural History. Mostly, staff are tied up preparing for exhibits, handling outreach and marketing, working events, performing curatorial duties, and managing operations, often not exclusively. A 3D scanner of some quality starts around $6000, a laptop that can scan and process things quickly about as much, storage and hosting is anywhere from $20-40k on a 3-5 year lifecycle, and a DAM capable of managing 3D digital assets could be a few thousand a year. Now assuming you are given funding, you've got to take a person who is qualified to handle the artifacts, understands the scanning process, can assess the quality of and correct their scans, has the time and access to label the digital objects so they can be integrated by the people who manage the collections, find someone who understands how to manage the "3D parts", and suddenly you have an idea of the burden the scale of this task would place on a museum with maybe half a dozen to a dozen full time staff and several hundred or thousand artifacts. This doesn't even touch rights of artists or owners, since few museums own everything they exhibit. Even more challenging, try convincing those people that allowing a third party to own digital simulacra of their works won't somehow backfire on them.

mavhc 4y ago
Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  > Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever They wouldn't release it freely anyway, the copyright fees from owning the one high quality photograph of various artworks basically funds most British museums.
  - buildsjets 4y ago
    Statens Museum for Kunst (link above) has released hundreds of scans under the CC0 license.
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
Good point, and thank you for the details. It must be a lot more time-consuming than it appears at first glance. As an engineer, I really ought to know better than to make that mistake!

buildsjets 4y ago

Yes, and I greatly appreciate the efforts of the Danish Statens Museum for Kunst, for sharing great scans of many objects in their collecction, including several of the Belvedere figures. https://www.myminifactory.com/category/SMK-Statens-museum-for-Kunst-The-National-Gallery-of-Denmark https://www.myminifactory.com/category/SMK-Statens-museum-fo... But "Bust of a Philosopher or Barbarian" is my favorite, I made a large 3D print of him that I keep on my desk. https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-bust-of-a-philosopher-or-barbarian-102085 https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-bust-of-a-phil...