Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/77744
n n n n Scanning A Digital Solution Garland oversees the repair, authentication, and general maintenance of the museum's 33,500-plus art objects, and ensures that they are placed in a suitable environment. Typical- ly, digital technology is not used in these en- deavors, though she did work with Epic Scan (Portland, Oregon) two years prior to the cof- fin quandary to digitally scan an 18th room and its ornate ceiling from a locale in Turin, Italy, to verify that the dimensions of that room matched a period room installed at the museum. The CG data from the scans also will be used to construct an exact replica of the ceiling for the room at the museum. "For us, using CG technology has been kind of an experimental thing. We normally don't use it," says Garland. "I was trying to think of a quick way of monitoring changes in a very graphic way so that the results would be clear to everyone." In the past, the museum would have used photography, or even considered photogram- metry, which is often used in the preservation world, for this endeavor. But for the issue at hand, scanning offered the most comprehen- sive and immediate solution, revealing even the tiniest movement in any of the compo- nents of the coffin as it was positioned up- right, notes Garland. In addition, a scan of the entire surface would serve as a baseline archive should any damage occur to the object in the future; it also could be compared to a future scan to reveal any structural changes that may occur over time. century The ornate coffin was digitally scanned using a high-precision Leica T-Scan laser tracker and a non-contact Leica T-Scan hand scanner (below.) At right on opposite page are imaging results of the foot and head areas. "The coffin [set] is very fragile, and we were concerned about the paint layers on top of the wood; it was already flaking off, and we wanted to document and record it in case we lost any more paint," says Garland. "Also, the coffin had been lying horizontally since it was in the tomb, and we were concerned about how 36 June/July 2012