Hyperallergic.com reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken a unprecedented move that seems totally obvious — in hindsight (we’ve never seen a report of any other institution endeavoring such a project). They’re restoring the color that (likely) originally decorated the Temple of Dendur without compromising the physical integrity of the temple walls via color projections!
“We recognize the Temple of Dendur today as a monochromatic sandstone structure, but its walls, like those of most ancient Egyptian temples, were originally painted bright colors. Time and weather have scrubbed the temple of its many pigments, similarly to how the elements have whitened so many sculptures from antiquity. Now, a small section of the outer, southern wall of the Roman-period temple appears close to its original form during the reign of Augustus Caesar, thanks to the help of light projections. For the next month and a half, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which received the two-room temple from Egypt in 1965, is shining a light on a particular carved scene in order to revive the millennia-old building and show visitors that the sands along the Nile were once awash in color.”
Read the entire article here:
