And the Art of Museums Lives On (in a 200 MB Archive)

The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, known as “Bod,” have existed for 400 years and hold thirteen million items, more than one million of which are part of the special collections: rare books and manuscripts, papyri, maps, atlases, copper plates, photographs… Two floors underground, in a dim workshop insulated from the noise of the street above, a machine named after a goddess scans them in three dimensions with a detail level of 25 microns: for each pixel of the images it produces, the scanner captures a surface area equivalent to about a fifth of a human hair. This marks the first time that the Bod, one of Europe’s oldest libraries, collects data at such high resolution from its collections.

Named Selene, the goddess of the moon for the Greeks, the scanner has been specifically designed to capture the texture and color of low-relief surfaces, nearly flat, such as book pages or manuscripts, which are rich in textures, effectively allowing flat works to be viewed as 3D objects. Its resolution is 1,100 dots per inch, although it could potentially capture down to 12 microns, more than double the resolution.

This, let’s say, topography cannot be seen or recorded with conventional photographic techniques. These volumes are so invisible that, for over twelve centuries, no one noticed that a rare and valuable 8th-century medieval manuscript concealed incisions in its margins: the name in Old English of a woman, Eadburg.

The marks, very light—the most intense only between 15 and 20 microns deep—and with no trace of ink, were discovered when John Barrett, the chief photographer of the library, used Selene to scan the manuscript, a Latin copy of the Book of Acts of the Apostles. Analyzing the images with Jessica Hodgkinson, who was then preparing her doctorate on women and medieval culture, they concluded that they corresponded to this female name, Eadburg, a woman presumed to be English and very educated, who inscribed it up to 15 times, either fully or abbreviated, in the biblical text. The finding became the Women in the Margins project.

Technology of Patience

The Factum Arte workshop, in the Madrid neighborhood of Ciudad Lineal, could be a figment of the imagination, a jumble akin to Alice in Wonderland: a colossal copy from the 4th century welcomes you at its towering height of 13 meters; take a step, and tombs of pharaohs from the underworld greet you, another step, and stunning Renaissance paintings; at the end of a room with high ceilings and suspended particles of plaster, two enormous 3D printers, one designed in collaboration with photographer Boris Savelev to print images up to four meters high. Amid originals and copies and theatrical mists, the temptation to touch everything is so great that it’s best to keep your hands in your pockets.

Selene is the most complex technological invention they have tackled in 3D scanning. Except for the camera and lens, “the core of the system and everything surrounding it is designed here by us: the electronics for the flashes, the electronic design, the programming of the microcontrollers, the communication between the machine and the computer, the software that processes the images, the geographic information system with which we visualize them…,” explains Carlos Bayod, project director.

“When a researcher approaches a work of art—says Santiago del Bosque, technical art analyst—they need two things: time and patience. And with the object, you don’t have those directly. Our technological work helps to achieve this: to bring it closer, to create that bridge, to build that connection.”

Last summer, they installed a model at the British Museum to digitize its collection of 130,000 cuneiform tablets, and recently, the libraries of Princeton and Manchester universities have acquired the system and are studying their collections with it.

In Spain, Factum installed a model at the Instituto Valencia de Don Juan in Madrid last November in a non-profit collaboration to digitize its collection. This holds about 8,000 objects, including textiles, ceramics, coins, medals, jet, carved ivory, weapons, jewelry, and an archive of over 50,000 manuscripts and documents. Although it is one of the most significant collections of Islamic art on the Iberian Peninsula, it is not a museum. Researchers can request to examine the objects, but the public has no access. And it has remained hidden for over a hundred years, like a great secret.

So far. Currently, Selene has scanned hundreds of pieces: ceramics, textiles, jet, astrolabes, paintings… and the aim is to scan them all. “This is the way to have a snapshot of their conservation state, but also to open the collection to researchers worldwide so they can access it remotely through specific navigation applications,” explains Cano.

They have also scanned two unique manuscripts: First and Second Parts of the Carpentry Rules, written by Diego López de Arenas between 1613 and 1618, and Treatise on Painting in Three Books, authored by Francisco Pacheco in 1638. Both are early versions of treatises that would be published later. “The results obtained allow us to understand them as creative diaries: the direct contact between hand and paper brings us closer than ever to the author’s presence. Corrections, crossings out, additions, cuts, and supplementary pages act like recipes describing the transformation of wood and paint,” says del Bosque.

Another notable piece is the Fortuny tile, a legendary item from the collection that has only come out for a exhibition at the Prado Museum. “It is a highly delicate piece, and we managed to take it out for Selene. When digitizing it, we saw that it had broken at some point. As an art historian focused on the material aspect, I didn’t notice when I saw it that it showed signs of restoration. It wasn’t until I processed the images that I said: here it is, this is where it broke,” concludes del Bosque.

Invisible 3D Supports

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles faces an unsolvable problem: it is located in an active seismic zone, on the San Andreas Fault. Every year, they receive numerous works, although they do not specify the exact number, lent by museums around the world. “For us, it has always been a significant challenge to find a way to exhibit them safely and discreetly,” explains JB Farret, senior mount maker in the Conservation of Decorative Arts and Sculpture area at the Getty, via Zoom.

Before 3D scanning, they would travel to museums to gather information about the pieces, and upon returning to Los Angeles, they made models from paper and other materials to create supports that would withstand earthquakes. Now they scan and print digital twins that serve as very precise models for designing and fabricating supports so that when the actual work arrives, only minimal adjustments are necessary.

“In recent years, we have become very good at scanning, and now we also print some supports, especially if they are internal mounts, if we can go inside the work of art. For example, a hollow bronze statue, we scan the interior and print supports that fit very precisely and are invisible to the public. The goal is always minimal manipulation,” says Farret.

The number of these supports they produce varies depending on exhibitions but can reach hundreds each year. Recently, they are working on the exhibition The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece which will bring 228 pieces from Pylos, Greece, of which they have scanned around 70, incredibly fragile: gold pieces, swords, weapons, sculptures, one of the oldest bronze crowns in Europe…

“Everything is so fragile and small that the ability to scan them in 3D is very important. And, once again, we have time limitations because the installation period is very short. The exhibition also focuses on the archaeological process, so much of this material has been excavated and recently unearthed, which means it is not so consolidated, making it a bit more challenging to work with,” he explains.

Art Born Digital

At the Reina Sofía Museum, they recently launched a European project to scan 300 works, in addition to the Guernica and another 30 visible on their website, implementing high-resolution 3D scanning. “We scan when we have to work on a piece with an issue; we don’t do it systematically for all,” explains Jorge García Gómez-Tejedor, head of conservation-restoration at the museum. The goal is for everything to be available online so that the digital twins are accessible to the public.

In fact, accessibility is another door that 3D scanning opens. “The moment you create high-resolution images, you can animate the works in a virtual space. At a conference, a visually impaired person was very interested because you can access works through textures, even temperatures… It’s an approach that intrigues me,” he shares over the phone. Additionally, for complex works that need to be assembled and occupy a lot of spatial volume, virtual reconstructions make them more accessible to the public.

“It’s quite important to conduct this type of study because it is a way to preserve the work,” concludes the conservator, “the digital object always allows us to reconstruct it again.” Thus, art can live forever, eluding time.