Hands On

I like to touch. I love hands-on museums with buttons to push and shapes to manipulate. I've often wondered why traditional museums — the Louvre, for example, or the Met — don't allow visitors to touch all of the displays. Sure, Renoir's Bathers might end up with a few chocolate stains and that dingyao white-china bowl from the Song dynasty might get a few chips. But aren't those small prices to pay for allowing people a chance to get touchy-feely with the world's best artworks?

O.K., this is stupid. But what if technology could digitally capture precise shapes and textures and allow...

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