How Two Artists Pulled Off A Brilliant Heist Using Just A 3-D Scanner
They stole nothing—but left with an unprecedented 3-D model of an Egyptian artifact that's been in Germany since 1913.
Inside Berlin's Neues Museum, two museum attendants guard the entrance to the room that holds the famous bust of Queen Nefertiti, while two more flank the glass-encased sculpture to prohibit visitors from taking photos. That's four guards total, none of whom noticed when artists Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles spent three hours one Sunday in October scanning the sculpture with a hacked Kinect. In January, the German artists released the data online and created a 3-D printed polymer resin replica of the piece that now resides in the American University in Cairo.