In collaboration with the Louvre Museum, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium is currently hosting an exhibition entitled “2050 – a brief history of the future”. As part of this exhibition, the museum wanted to exhibit a 3D printed replica of the Venus of Galgenberg and worked with Fuel3D and Belgian 3D printing firm, Trideus to make this a reality.
The Venus of Galgenberg, one of the world’s oldest figurines, is dated around 30,000 B.C. and is permanently housed at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna. The concept of recreating a 3D-printed copy of the Venus for the exhibition in Brussels was designed to show how technology might change the way that people experience art in the future.
The SCANIFY handheld 3D scanner was used to capture several images of the Venus at its home in Vienna. These images were then combined in Fuel3D Studio software to create a full 3D model of the Venus in high-resolution shape and colour.
3D model on Sketchfab:
The 3D model files were then provided to Trideus who prepared the replica Venus for 3D printing. The Venus was printed in full color using sandstone printing technology, which works by printing binder material and colored ink layer-by-layer into a bed of gypsum-based powder.
“With this, we hope to initiate a reflection and to open a debate on the evolution of the museum in the digital era,” said Jennifer Beauloye, curator of the exhibition.
“This was a wonderful project to be part of,” said Stuart Mead, CEO, Fuel3D. “We developed SCANIFY to help bring the potential of 3D to a wider audience and this application is a perfect example of how it is doing that.”
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