The Cave Paintings of Lascaux at the Field Museum
Some of our planet’s oldest art, the cave paintings in Lascaux, France, are no longer accessible to visitors, whose mere presence (from body heat and humidity) threatened preservation of the fragile rock paintings. But that didn’t stop the tourist industry from making to-scale replicas of the caves, including their shape and texture, and the paintings of bulls thereupon. It proved so successful they made it twice. This second, more perfect copy—made of fiberglass and with exact reproductions of the caveman art—landed at the Field Museum this year. If you squinted real hard, the educational videos looked like distant fires.
Best of Chicago 2013
