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Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

(greatwavetoday.com)
112 points colinprince | 1 comments | 09 Jul 25 03:34 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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akkartik ◴[09 Jul 25 05:24 UTC] No.44506571[source]▶
The 'but why?' link is fascinating: https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-...
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vasco ◴[09 Jul 25 05:42 UTC] No.44506653[source]▶
> This means that if these prints are displayed for three months at 50 lux, they should be stored in the dark for at least a year before they are displayed again

> While these measures will not stop fading from occurring altogether, they will ensure that these world-famous prints fade so slowly that they will be seen by countless generations of visitors to the Museum in the future.

This trade-off is interesting, are we maximizing for number of people watching works? Or are we purely maximizing time? Because its not obvious to me that more people will see a work if it lasts 1000 more years but spends 80% of that time in storage, vs lasting 100 more years spending 0% of the time in storage.

Also lets say you go to the museum today and are lucky that it happens to be on display. But your friend travels to see it, it happens to be in 80% storage time, then the friend goes back home and dies without seeing it so that some future person that doesn't exist yet even can see it later without fading. Why is the future person more important than the current person, in a sense?

Storing it assumes a lot, that humanity will survive, that people will be interested in seeing it, that some fire isn't going to destroy their storage, etc. Meanwhile real life people would've seen it already. I don't have an answer, just questions though.

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qq66 ◴[09 Jul 25 06:08 UTC] No.44506766[source]▶
By limiting the hours today, it helps make sure that the people who do see it are the ones most interested in seeing it. Those are the ones who will look up the schedule, schedule their trip around it, etc... while if it's just permanently up, many of the viewers will be random passersby (and the number of viewers per hour of illumination will probably be lower)
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eru ◴[09 Jul 25 07:28 UTC] No.44507191[source]▶
> By limiting the hours today, it helps make sure that the people who do see it are the ones most interested in seeing it.

We should auction off the visitor spots, then.

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1. msephton ◴[09 Jul 25 08:26 UTC] No.44507529[source]▶
You joke, but visitor slots are limited. I missed it at the British Museum because I turned up without a reservation. Also, BM have two impressions and rotates them meaning that people can see "it" (actually one or the other) for longer. Some institutions like Boston have a handful of impressions so can show "it" more frequently: the last time they cycled three.