Monday, 21 January 2013

Let's open more windows on our cultural heritage!


There are some projects in the field of the scientific study of cultural heritage and of their digital communication that deserve a greater diffusion, in order to be taken as an example all over the world.

Today we deal with the project “Closer to van Eyck: Rediscovering the Ghent Altarpiece”, mainly supported by The Getty Foundation. Between 2010 and 2011 this project involved The Adoration of the Mistic Lamb that was subjected to a series of technical and photographical documentations and also investigations aimed to the assessment of the conservation status prior to a restoration.

All the obtained results are public, on-line and free and explorable through the amazing graphic interface of the website. It is possible to download the files of the reports of the investigations and, above all, the visitor is invited to a visual exploration of the work thanks to a growing and growing zoom-in of the details of macrophotographs (visible and IR), IR reflectography and X radiography! There’s more: it is also possible to visualize the cleaning tests and consult the documentation of the dendrocronology investigations and all the other methods used.

I like imagining a big portal where everyone could enjoy different kinds of works of art with all the investigations carried out on them! Some years ago in the South of Italy, the Cultural Association O.N.D.A. (Online Non Destructive Archaeology) had tried to make the first attempt for the building of such a website, concerning in that case a different field, the discovery of the underground invisible archaeological heritage! Unfortunately it could not benefit from a proper support… But this is another story and shall be told another time.

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