FIVE YEARS ON: The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is up for sale

Are the heritage authorities going to act in favour of the preservation of this important cultural asset and acknowledge that the model proposed by Factum Foundation and Re:Form has already proven successful and demonstrated that bell making can be revitalised? Will sensible decisions be made on the grounds that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry’s optimum value lies in the fact that it is a bell foundry?
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Aaltosiilo: a musical instrument for a night

On September 24th 2022, ‘FAREWELL TO THE HOPPERS’ was the first event of AaltoSiilo project produced by Factum Foundation as part of Oulu2026 culture programme: a series of performances, projections and a concert organised in the iconic Silo by Alvar Aalto.

Watch the performances by local DJs, audiovisual artists and Finnish percussion group Transistori

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Fare Arte 2022: Workshop in Palazzo Te

Organised by Factum Foundation and ARCHiVe as part of the programme 'Fare Arte' conceived by the Scuola di Palazzo Te, the workshop Recording Giulio Romano: Shape & Surface aims to introduce students and professionals to the techniques and methods of digital preservation. From September 12th until September 16th, the 30-hour workshop introduces the theoretical and practical methodologies for digital recording, while carrying out a real digitisation project inside Palazzo Te in Mantua, Italy. More on the project

Grayson Perry's Covid Bell on show at The Worshipful Company of Founders

After the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, Grayson Perry's Covid Bell will be on show at the Founder's Hall of the Worshipful Company of Founders, during their annual Open House on September 10th and 11th. The bell was kindly donated by Grayson Perry to revitalise bell making in the UK following the highly publicised closure of Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
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Bakor Monoliths exhibition in Lagos

Factum Foundation has collaborated with the Trust for African Rock Art and the National Commission for Museums and Monuments Nigeria on the exhibition ‘The Ancient Rock Art of Nigeria’ at the Nigerian National Museum (May 5 – June 2, 2022). The display was curated by Terry Little and Ferdinand Saumarez Smith, and was supported by the US Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation. Two facsimiles of Bakor monoliths, made from data recorded in 2018, were featured in the exhibition. More on the project

Facsimile of John, Count Capo d'Istria on display in Corfu

The facsimile of John, Count Capo d’Istria (1776-1831) by Sir Thomas Lawrence is currently part of an exhibition commissioned by the Rothschild Foundation at the Capodistrias Museum (21 April - 30 November, 2022).
The painting was recorded at Buckingham Palace by Factum Foundation in 2020 with the generous collaboration of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Royal Collection.
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Raphael Cartoon facsimile on display

Factum Foundation and Factum Arte worked on the making of the facsimile of Paul Preaching at Athens Cartoon for the exhibition 'The Credit Suisse Exhibition: Raphael' (9 April - 31 July, 2022) at the National Gallery, London. As the original Cartoons by Raphael are unable to travel, the recording and rematerialisation of the data is another example of how facsimiles provide new ways to study, disseminate and display the series on long-term loan to the V&A by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Collection.

Recording and training with ARCE in Cairo

In 2022, ARCE will begin a conservation and restoration project of the Mausoleum of Ikhwat Yusuf, that will include a digital restoration in collaboration with Factum Foundation. In early March, Osama Dawod and Otto Lowe arrived in Cairo and recorded the mausoleum’s mihrab in high-resolution using photogrammetry and provided hands-on photogrammetry training for inspectors from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
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Recreation of leather wallpaper for Palazzo Te

Factum Arte and Factum Foundation have worked with Fondazione Palazzo Te to recreate the atmosphere that once welcomed the guests of the Gonzaga family for the visitors of the exhibition Le pareti delle meraviglie (26 March - 26 June, 2022). Data recorded in January 2022 inside the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris was processed to make a recreation fitted to the spaces of the Camera dei Venti.

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Recording 15th-century tapestries at the Giorgio Cini Collection

ARCHiVe has completed the first high-resolution digital recording of one of the great tapestries owned by the Giorgio Cini collection: The Entry into Palestine of the Army of Vespasian. In March 2022, a team from Factum Foundation obtained 3D data of the full tapestry's front side and colour information of both front and back with a resolution around 500 dpi at 1:1 scale.
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Recording the Dabous Giraffe

Ferdinand Saumarez-Smith from Factum Foundation accompanied the Trust for African Rock Art to document the Dabous Giraffe in the Aïr Mountains in Niger.
The petroglyph dates from between 4-6,000 BC and is the largest known animal petroglyph in the world. It was recorded using close-range and drone-based photogrammetry from February 10th to 15th.

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The bronze portraits of Michelangelo

The exhibition 'The Bronze Effigy of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra' (15 February - 31 July, 2022), curated by Cecilie Hollberg at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Florence, reunites nine bronze busts from various collections around the world, for the first time. Much debate still surrounds the 'genealogy' between the different casts and Factum Foundation recorded each bust in high resolution. The data has been analysed and compared by merging digital expertise with material evidence over several months.
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Recording three rooms in Palazzo Te

In February 2022, Factum Foundation carried out a vast high-resolution digitisation project and established two collaborations for exhibitions opening the same year. A team of digitisation specialists from ARCHiVe and Factum Foundation recorded three of the most famous rooms in Palazzo Te using LiDAR, photogrammetry and composite photography.

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Recording in AlUla: successful completion of Phase 1

Factum Foundation and the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) are delighted to announce that the first phase of their collaboration is now complete. The largest high-resolution 3D recording project ever carried in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and initiated over a year ago, aims at producing a 3D model of the archaeological sites of Hegra (UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008), Dadan, Jabal Ikmah and Abu Ud.
More on the recording and the next phases