A monumental task
Reality has not been kind to the large Chinese statue in Harvard Yard, but maybe virtual reality will be. A group of Harvard digital preservation experts dedicated their evenings last month capturing a three-dimensional scan of the marble monument, a gift of Harvard’s Chinese alumni on Harvard’s 300th birthday in 1936. The statue, on the west side of Widener Library, is of a tortoise-dragon figure bearing a large rectangular stele on its back. Though faded with time, the monument’s inscription extolls the virtues of culture and of learning, and praises Harvard for its role in educating the 1,000 Chinese alumni in whose name the statue was donated. The statue, called the Tercentenary Stele, has been damaged by the elements and by acid rain. Its inscription, which originally stood out against a black painted background, is barely legible. Jeffrey R. Williams, executive director of the Harvard Center Shanghai and one of the scanning project’s organizers,...