Today, 3D modeling community Sketchfab has taken a small step to better enable the preservation and sharing of cultural artifacts with the launch of Sketchfab for Museums and Cultural Heritage. The program will both categorize all existing Sketchfab members related to such institutions in one browseable location and enable new museums obtain free business accounts on the site.
Cultural institutions from the Smithsonian to the British Museum have recognized the essential role that 3D scanning and 3D printing play in curatorial arts and education as a whole. On the one hand, precise scans of artifacts, such as the bust of Amenemhat III from 1800 BC embedded above, provide digital records of important pieces of human history. And, on the other, they allow for remote access to such artifacts to anyone around the world. And 3D printing allows for the physical reproduction of such pieces for a tangible learning experience for classrooms and museum exhibitions.
Sketchfab’s current archaeology category consists of works uploaded by twenty-two different institutions from all over, but, if your institution would like to expand that list, email the Sketchfab team at [email protected] to obtain a free business account. If you don’t yet belong to such an institution, browse the existing catalog of hundreds of models. It’s really pretty amazing to see the entire timeline of human history all in one place. This scan of the Lovers of Valdaro, in which two Neolithic skeletons are preserved in a 6,000-year embrace, is reason alone for giving every cultural institution free everything.
