Friday links: Lit-up Rothko, nude museum tour, gluten-free art
Photographer: Robert Howlett | Isambard Kingdom Brunel, builder of the Great Eastern | ca. 1857-1858 | George Eastman House, eastmanhouse.org
Some stories we’ve been reading this week:
- Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals were deteriorating rapidly, and it was impossible to restore them by conventional means. The solution: five digital projectors to light the canvases so that the original colors reappear. This unusual method raises a host of issues.
- A researcher suggests the famous “Meidum Geese” painting in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo is a fake created in the 19th century—and that a real Pyramid Age painting may be hidden underneath. (You can take a close look at the work in the Artstor Digital Library.)
- A nude tour of James Turrell’s light sculptures is more than a gimmick, according to a writer who valiantly dropped her trousers for the story.
- When the co-creator of The Simpsons pulled out of a portrait commission, the artist, reluctant to trash the work, made a few changes.
- A Bay Area woman inherited a painting she had no information about. She stored it under her couch until she discovered it was a lost and extremely rare masterpiece of 18th century painting.
- Brilliant: The Gluten-Free Museum.