via Ideastream, 12 November 2021:
A 1,500-year-old statue of the Hindu god Krishna received a 21st-century facelift at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The results go on display this weekend.
Three years ago, Colleen Snyder fired-up what looked like a high-powered hairdryer and focused a blast of heat on the thigh of this Cambodian relic in the art museum’s conservation lab. Krishna arrived at the museum as a collection of broken fragments in 1975. Conservators tried to put him back together at that time, but they didn’t quite get it right, so a new generation of museum staff decided to give it a try.
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“They attempt the reconstruction. It is not easy,” said Mace. “There are no joints between the pieces, the angles are difficult.”
And, a key piece was missing – the left hand which holds the mountain over Krishna’s head. It turns out that fragment had been mistakenly attached to a different statue, still in Cambodia. This was confirmed, thanks to some modern technology from Case Western Reserve University. In 2014, the Cleveland Krishna and his missing hand, on two opposite sides of the world, were each digitally scanned and then virtually combined on a computer screen.
Source: Reconstructing Krishna at the Cleveland Museum of Art | Arts & Culture | Ideastream Public Media
