Ten or so years ago, word was that, one day, we’d be able to download the image of an object from the Web, send it to a 3D printer, and hey! presto! print a copy of that object. This is technology that does, actually, exist, to an extent, right now, although mostly in universities and corporate laboratories (its efficacy on a personal scale is yet to be determined, because the printing process takes forever and home-sized models can only print in resin, which, who needs a toaster made of resin?) but the idea of being able to print a 3D scale model of, say, Winged Victory (which isn’t in the Met, but you get the idea) has a lot to recommend it. Picture, say, art students, no longer exclusively reliant on 2D illustrations in textbooks, or something as simple as liking a particular piece of sculpture and printing a little 3D resin replica for your desk. This vaguely Jetsonian concept has become, on some level, a reality, as the Met stuck a bunch of hackers in a room for two days recently and wouldn’t let them out until they came up with, and I quote, “something cool”, which it seems they did, scanning some 35 pieces from the Met’s collection, rendering them in 3D and uploading them to Thingiverse, in the process doing things to them like giving the Qi dynasty lion a mustache. (FULL ARTICLE: Kyle Chayka, Blouin Artinfo)