Dec 3, 2023
Harvard University has a library that protects the rarest colors in the world.
The Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies houses the Forbes Pigment Collection, which contains more than 2,500 samples of pigments, some incredibly rare and harvested from things like mummies, heavy metals, poisons, and precious minerals.
The collection was amassed by Edward Waldo Forbes (1873-1969), who directed Harvard's Fogg Museum, between 1910 and 1944.
Forbes is considered the Father of Art Conservation in the United States and spent most of his life traveling the world to collect various pigments that he used to authenticate classical Italian paintings.
The pigments are still used by art experts to authenticate and understand paintings.
