Restoration a dying art

Nice science column in today's Wall Street Journal by Robert Lee Hotz on the lost art of restoring and conserving masterpieces. It's set at the Getty, which is spearheading a program to train new experts. "No more than half a dozen or so restoration specialists world-wide have the expertise for such sophisticated work, and most of them are nearing retirement," Hotz writes, adding the big picture: "This art specialty is a microcosm of the crisis in lost expertise that faces many technical endeavors today, from nuclear weapons maintenance to manned space flight." Nice quote: "People talk about the learning curve," says California Institute of Technology physicist Paul Dimotakis. "Nobody talks about the forgetting curve."

There's video and more photos at the WSJ.