IU teams with Italian museum on sculpture digitizing project

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) - Indiana University is teaming up with an Italian museum on a project to create 3-D digital models of the museum's large collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures.

Under the agreement signed this week by IU and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, the museum's 1,250 sculptures will be digitally scanned to produce high-resolution 3-D models that will be available online by 2020.

The Florence museum's sculptures were largely assembled by the famed Medici family between the 15th and 18th centuries.

IU President Michael A. McRobbie calls the effort "a historic and hugely ambitious project" that will benefit scholars worldwide by giving them virtual access to those irreplaceable sculptures.

The project will be spearheaded by IU professor of informatics Bernard Frischer, who's the director of IU's Virtual World Heritage Laboratory.