In 2021, the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing (MCRW) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which focuses on the regions of Asia, Africa, and the Oceana, began the process of deinstalling its collection to start renovations on their galleries. The Imaging Department coordinated closely with the curatorial, collections and conservation teams to develop a comprehensive 2 and 3D imaging campaign. This paper centers around the unique challenges our team faced when asked to record, completely and accurately, four monumental New Guinea Ancestor (Bisj) Poles, carved out of the wood of mangrove trees by the Asmat people, on an extremely tight timeline. The decision to employ 3D digitization is always a difficult one because technology is constantly evolving and there are few standards for image quality metrics. This paper documents our team's approach to solving technical challenges.
Heather Lynn Johnson, Deepa Elizabeth Paulus, "Taking a Technical Leap: 3D Imaging of New Guinea Bisj Poles" in Archiving Conference, 2023, pp 1 - 6, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2168-3204.2023.20.1.1