Adam Lowe (arts innovator)

Adam Lowe (Oxford, 1959) is an artist, director of Factum Arte, and founder of the non-profit Factum Foundation for Digital Technology in Conservation. Working largely through these organisations, he has made substantial innovations in the fields of the arts and digital technology.
Lowe was trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford and the Royal College of Art in London. He worked as an artist throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 2000, he worked with Simon Schaffer to curate N01se, an exhibition held at Kettle’s Yard and four other museums in Cambridge, as well as the Wellcome Institute in London. 
In 2001 Lowe founded Factum Arte with Manuel Franquelo and Fernando Garcia-Guereta, although he soon became sole director of the company. First through Factum Arte and from 2009 through Factum Foundation, Lowe has worked on numerous projects involving the high-resolution digital recording of artworks and the production of facsimiles (high resolution physical copies) from this data. He also curates exhibitions, lectures widely, and writes about the use of digital technologies in cultural heritage preservation.
== Cultural heritage innovations ==
In collaboration with others, Lowe has designed new scanning systems for recording cultural heritage sites and objects, and has used them to record artworks and cultural heritage sites across the world. From these recordings he has created facsimiles of numerous sites and artefacts. These include the Tomb of Tutankhamun and the Tomb of Seti I, Veronese’s Wedding at Cana, and two monumental lamassu from Nimrud (now in the British Museum). These have been shown at high-profile institutions including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the National Gallery in London, the Cini Foundation in Venice, the Antikenmuseum Basel and the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden. 
Lowe has also conducted several projects which have used digital technology to push beyond the boundaries of the original art object. He has created 3D interpretations of objects designed (but never made in 3D) by Piranesi, and has re-created lost artworks including Caravaggio’s Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence and the 12th century silver world-map by al-Idrisi. In the case of Raphael’s Lo Spasimo, he used digital processing and outputting technologies to explore a possible alternative history for a painting: where the original had been transferred from wooden boards to canvas in the early 19th century, a common practice of restorers at the time, Factum’s recreation re-imagined Lo Spasimo as a work on board. 
Lowe is a pioneer of digital restoration (the restoration of objects in virtual space only, with no interventions to the physical object). Factum Foundation has digitally restored artworks including frescoed surfaces, a tapestry, a fragmented statue (whose parts were reassembled into their original composition) and a vandalised cave which was restored based on existing photographs. Several of these digitally restored objects have been re-created as facsimiles.
Lowe has curated and co-curated several exhibitions, including The Arts of Piranesi (shown at various locations, 2010-13), Scanning Seti: The Regeneration of a Pharaonic Tomb (Antikenmuseum Basel, 2017-18), Madame de Pompadour in the Frame (Waddesdon Manor, 2019-20), and The Revealed Masterpiece (Palazzo Fava, Bologna, 2020). 
== Awards and positions ==
In 2009, Lowe received the Prix Microsoft pour les Humanités Scientifiques. In 2014, Factum Foundation received the inaugural Apollo award for Digital Innovation of the Year. Since 2016, Lowe has been an Adjunct Professor on the Historic Preservation masters program at GSAPP, Columbia University. In 2019, he was made a Royal Designer for Industry, with the title Designer of Art.
== Work for contemporary artists ==
Lowe’s company Factum Arte has made work for many contemporary artists, including Marina Abramovič, El Anatsui, Anish Kapoor, Rachid Koraïchi, Maya Lin, Cornelia Parker, Grayson Perry, Marc Quinn, Boris Savelev, and Sarah Sze.
==In the media==
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== References ==	
== External links ==
* Factum Foundation website
* Factum Arte website
* Adam Lowe - Columbia GSAPP
* Digital Innovation of the Year | Apollo Magazine
* Adam Lowe of Factum Arte Makes the Art of the World's
Category:1959 births
Category:British artists
Category:English founders
Category:British directors
Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art
Category:Alumni of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art