Through a Scanner, Getty

When The Getty Center first opened its doors in 1997, a local billionaire remarked that it was “too good for Los Angeles.“ Luckily, the J. Paul Getty Museum knows better. Nothing is too good for Los Angeles, and no works of art are too good for the people who admire them. For thousands of years, powerful people have commissioned artists to venture into museums, churches, temples, and ruins around the world to make copies for their private collections. Today, with 3D scanning, photo-stitching, and printing, that tradition is poised to evolve and spread faithful reproductions of treasured artwork far beyond the walls of elite palaces. Leading the trend, on June 1, 2012 The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced its collaboration with MakerBot Industries to scan and share data models of objects in the Met's collection. Free, open-source, printable scans will be shared freely on Makerbot's object file-sharing site, .