Many major museums—like the Smithsonian, the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the British Museum—are using 3D technology to replicate artifacts from prehistoric cave art in France to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, making art and artifacts broadly accessible—and repatriating objects stolen from colonized societies. The Smithsonian, for example, 3D printed a whale hat from the Tlingit clan in southeastern Alaska. Museums can display objects concurrently, and anyone with access to a 3D printer can get the digital files online and make their own copy. Plus, archaeologist Néstor Marqués says, “3D printing [can] create perfect replicas of the objects, or resize them if the objects are so small that their details can’t be seen properly,” a boon for education and research. And, since 2019, Google’s Arts and Culture Institute, nonprofit CyArk, and 3D printing company Stratasys have collaborated on the Open Heritage project, which aims to “bring important monuments and artifacts around the world to life” by reproducing small-scale versions of cultural heritage sites.
When choosing what to watch, it’s often good to look both ways, so to speak. The site doesthedogdie.com helps film and series…
