New publication: The aura in the age of digital materiality

This publication focuses on Factum Foundation's work to promote the use of high-resolution recording, digital restoration and creative re-materialisation while bringing into focus the changing attitudes towards owning, sharing, preserving and displaying cultural artefacts. It accompanies the exhibition 'La Riscoperta di un Capolavoro' (12 March - 28 June 2020, currently postponed) at Palazzo Fava, Bologna. Order now

New video: A quick guide to Factum’s multi-layered browser

A new video shows how to navigate Factum's multi-layered browsers, which allow you to move around the scanned surfaces and zoom into macro-level photographic data with a resolution of 400 dpi on a scale of 1:1. This allows the inspection of every single detail of the artifact, from any computer screen or mobile device.

Watch the full video here or access the viewer.

New video: Photogrammetry training with two students from saudi arabia

In November 2019, two students from Saudi Arabia, Jawharah Albalawi and Abdulrahim Sugair, started a two-week photogrammetry training in Factum Foundation’s headquarters in Madrid. The training was the second step of a collaborative project between Factum Foundation, Art Jameel, and the Royal Commission of AlUla (RCU). You can watch the full video here.

Learn more about the project

New film on Black Square recording

The Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow) has produced a short film about how recording Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915) with Factum Foundation is helping conservators and researchers find out more about what lies beneath the surface of the most famous painting of the Russian avant-garde.

Watch the full video here

NEW RECORDING ON ISLA DE PASCUA

A team from Factum Foundation has arrived in Easter Island to collaborate on a series of projects with the Museo Sebastian Englert. The first items to be recorded are a collection of painted stone panels from the Birdman cult era that were removed from their original location at a site called Orongo by the Thomson expedition in 1886. Further projects at various sites around the island are under discussion. Learn more

al-Idrisi's silver map on show at Hay Festival Abu Dhabi

Factum Foundation's recreation of the lost silver map of al-Idrisi was the backdrop to Jerry Brotton's talk 'The Centre of the World: al-Idrisi's Map' on February 28th, at Hay Festival Abu Dhabi. After Hay Festival, it will be part of Factum Foundation's exhibition in Palazzo Fava, Bologna, from March 12th to June 28th.

Learn more

New discovery in Tutankhamun's tomb

A team of archaeologists, while conducting a radar survey over the area surrounding Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, has detected evidence of an additional chamber behind the wall paintings. The theory by Nicholas Reeves, backed in 2015 by Factum Foundation's high-resolution recordings of the tomb, hinted at the possibility of hidden chambers containing Nefertiti's resting place.
Read the full article on Nature

The Materiality of the Aura: an exhibition by Factum Foundation in Bologna

On the second floor of Palazzo Fava, as part of the exhibition The Revealed Masterpiece that celebrates the return to Bologna of the Polittico Griffoni, visitors will be able will explore the role of digital technology and reflect upon an object’s materiality and its “aura” (CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE).

Find out more

New recording at the National Galleries of Scotland

Ahead of the opening of the new Casa Natal de Velázquez in Seville in 2021, a team from Factum Foundation has carried out the high-resolution digitisation in 3D and colour of Old Woman Cooking Eggs by Diego Velázquez at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh.

Find out more

NEW RECORDING IN CLUSONE

In the last days of January, Factum Foundation recorded two paintings regarded as copies from Evaristo Baschenis' famous still lives of musical instruments, belonging to Museo Arte Tempo in Clusone, Italy. This is the first step of a collaboration between the Fondazione Giorgio Cini's Early Music Seminars, directed by Pedro Memelsdorff, and ARCHiVe aimed at identifying all the eight paintings belonging to a series previously held in San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice.

Find out more about ARCHiVe

Facsimile of Djehuty funerary garden has been installed in Luxor

The facsimile of the Djehuty Garden, commissioned by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to be part of the protective framwork built to safeguard the original in Luxor, has been installed. The fragile ancient structure will be protected from further erosion.

Learn more about the Djehuty Garden

Call in for Whitechapel Bell Foundry Planning Application

Factum Foundation and Re-Form Heritage are pleased and encouraged by the news that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, The Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP, has called in the planning decision on the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.

Find out more

Stoppelaëre House nominated for ICCROM-Sharjah Award 2019

The restoration of the Stoppelaëre House, carried out in 2017 by the Tarek Waly Center with support from Factum Foundation, has been nominated for the ICCROM-Sharjah Award for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage in the Arab region 2019. This Biennial Award seeks to honour and reward outstanding work that contributes to the protection and vitality of tangible cultural heritage in the Arab region.
Find out more

Upcoming exhibition: Bakor monoliths in Alok

Factum Foundation and Carène Foundation are working together with the Trust for African Rock Art (TARA) and the University of Calabar (UNICAL) on a a project aimed at documenting, conserving and raising awareness about the Bakor monoliths. The upcoming exhibition at British Museum in November 2020 will be traveling to the recording sites in Nigeria and then will be installed in Alok as a permanent display.

Find out more