2020 - Adam Lowe - Cleveland Humanities Festival - Research Guides at Case Western Reserve University

Introduction

This guide was prepared for the presentation by Adam Lowe at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Wednesday, April 1 from 5-6PM.

Biography

Adam Lowe is founder of Factum Arte, a multi-disciplinary workshop in Madrid dedicated to digital mediation in contemporary art and the production of facsimiles. Factum Arte is unique in that it seeks to bridge the divide between traditional craft conservation skills and new technologies of documentation by producing exacting facsimiles of heritage objects. Based in Madrid, he has worked on preservation projects with many world-renowned institutions, including the National Gallery, the Museo del Prado, the Louvre, The Vatican Museums, and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini.

Articles covering Lowe's work

Inside the Art World's Dream Factory; Bloomsberg Businessweek
The article discusses the art fabrication company Factum Arte in Madrid, Spain and its founder, Adam Lowe. Topics include the work of the performance artist Marina Abramovic in relation to Factum Arte, the history of art workshops and studios in relation to artists, and Lowe's involvement in the digital conservation of art through the Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation.
Making a Veronese; Art in America
The article discusses the work of Factum Arte, a digital workshop in Madrid, Spain run by British artist Adam Lowe that produces high-resolution facsimiles of works of art. The techniques, including two- and three-dimensional laser scanning, digital photography, and printing, are discussed, as is a particular Factum Arte project, the reproduction of the "Wedding at Cana" by Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese.
Even Better than the Real Thing?; Ancient Egypt Magazine
The article explores the work being carried out by Madrid, Spain-based digital design company Factum Arte to create a record of the condition of the chamber tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, numbered KV62, in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt in 2009. The undertaking aims to share the data collected with researchers as part of a longer term conservation effort. It suggests that the mix of Paraloid acrylic resin and animal glue used to decorate the walls enabled the plaster to breathe.
Saviors of the Lost Art; Mail on Sunday
Gustav Klimt's Medicine is one of the wonders of early 20th-century art. At 13ft tall, it looms over a room at Factum Arte in Madrid. 'This painting is magical,' says Factum founder Adam Lowe. Elsewhere in the room are works by Van Gogh, Vermeer and Monet. But none is genuine. Medicine was looted by the Nazis in WWII, and the Monet, Vermeer and Van Gogh were burnt, stolen or destroyed. Everything here has been recreated using digital-mapping technology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Articles by Adam Lowe

Datareality; Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation History Theory & Criticism
Digital technology has thrown heritage into a new reality where scanning and printing, dematerialization and rematerialization, blur the boundary between the physical and the virtual, the tangible and the intangible. The digital is no longer linked only to the virtual and now has a physical presence. According to Lowe, we are witnessing the rise of a new “datareality” that is related but not the same as materiality, and that will change how we think and practice preservation.

Interviews

The Apollo Podcast: Adam Lowe
In this Apollo podcast, Thomas Marks talks to Adam Lowe, the founder of Factum Arte and the Factum Foundation, about the central role now played by digital recording and reproduction in the conservation of world heritage, as well as in art-historical interpretation and the creation of contemporary art. The discussion ranges from the ‘Michelangelo and Sebastiano’ exhibition at the National Gallery in London, for which the Factum Foundation has produced a facsimile of the Borgherini Chapel in Rome, to projects in Egypt, Daghestan and Chad – as well as Factum’s ‘playground for artists’ at its headquarters in Madrid.
Using High Tech Tools to Recreate and Preserve Ancient Treasures
Video from CBS Sunday Morning showing Lowe's workshop in action.

Cleveland Humanities Festival: 2020 - Adam Lowe

Introduction

Biography

Articles covering Lowe's work

Articles by Adam Lowe

Interviews