As part of efforts to archive the planet’s biodiversity, the organization has developed a new digitization device that generates authentic textured and colored insect scans. The original mask, gifted to the Smithsonian Institution in 1889, was made by applying wet plaster to the president’s face and beard, reports Smithsonian magazine’s Meilan Solly.ģ-D model of Abraham Lincoln Mills life mask on SketchfabĪnother selection from the collection is a scanned digital model of a ladybug, or Tytthaspis sedecimpunctata, housed at the Digital Archive of Natural History in Germany. Participating organizations include the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the National Gallery of Denmark, Spain’s Museus de Sitges and the Scottish Maritime Museum.Īmong the objects released into the public domain is the Abraham Lincoln Mills life mask. Ranging from historic artifacts to fossils and works of art, the items featured in the collection have entered the public domain through a collaboration between Sketchfab, Creative Commons and 27 cultural organizations from 13 different countries, according to a blog post. “With thousands of museums, libraries, art galleries, and archaeological projects already using Sketchfab to share their data online, the platform wants to make it easy for organizations to align their digital collections with their open access policies.”

“With the introduction of the CC dedication for cultural heritage content, Sketchfab continues to foster ongoing artistic and academic reuse of data under clear and easily understandable terms,” says Sketchfab founder and CEO Alban Denoyel in a statement quoted by Forbes. To mark this milestone in museum digitization and accessibility efforts, the 3-D portal has released a new virtual collection of 1,700 models available for the public to download, print or manipulate however they see fit.

Last week, Sketchfab announced plans to allow organizations to waive all copyright and dedicate their digital models to the public domain.

Now, thanks to a new open access initiative spearheaded by Sketchfab, the web’s largest platform for immersive 3-D content, anyone with an internet connection can “ re-use, re-imagine and remix” the vessel-as well as nearly 1,700 other historic artifacts-without limitation. Currently a priceless artifact in the National Air and Space Museum’s collections, the module was the only portion of the spacecraft to return to Earth. During the first manned lunar landing mission in July 1969, Apollo 11’s crew lived in a command module dubbed the Columbia.

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