A 13-year-old boy has outsmarted staff at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art after quickly pointing out an error in one of their exhibits' maps.
Benjamin Lerman Coady, a seventh grader at Renbrook School in West Hartford, Connecticut, who reads ahead in his school's history textbooks, told the Hartford Courant that he recognized the mistake on his first visit to the museum last summer.
Originally he thought the museum would be a walk through of 'just art on the wall,' having toured the American Museum of Natural History a few times before, but he was attracted to the historic map - catching an analytical eye.
The map in question was one of a region Benjamin had been recently studying in school, that of the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.
Benjamin said he began examining the dates on it, catching that the specifics deemed it to represent the region when the empire was at its largest. However Spain and parts of Africa were entirely missing, he said.
Approaching the front desk, they told him to fill out a form, detailing his complaint, but he said he never expected to hear back from them.
'The front desk didn't believe me,' he told the Courant. 'I'm only a kid.'
In September he did hear back from the museum's senior vice president for external affairs, in a letter telling him his comments were being forwarded to their medieval art department for review.
About four months later, Helen C. Evans, the museum's curator for Byzantine art, sent him an email.
'You are, of course, correct about the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian,' she wrote to him in January while inviting him back to the museum to meet with her.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-finding-mistake-map-visit.html#ixzz1tuQe0llR
Bravo Benjamin!
Benjamin Lerman Coady, a seventh grader at Renbrook School in West Hartford, Connecticut, who reads ahead in his school's history textbooks, told the Hartford Courant that he recognized the mistake on his first visit to the museum last summer.
Originally he thought the museum would be a walk through of 'just art on the wall,' having toured the American Museum of Natural History a few times before, but he was attracted to the historic map - catching an analytical eye.
The map in question was one of a region Benjamin had been recently studying in school, that of the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.
Benjamin said he began examining the dates on it, catching that the specifics deemed it to represent the region when the empire was at its largest. However Spain and parts of Africa were entirely missing, he said.
Approaching the front desk, they told him to fill out a form, detailing his complaint, but he said he never expected to hear back from them.
'The front desk didn't believe me,' he told the Courant. 'I'm only a kid.'
In September he did hear back from the museum's senior vice president for external affairs, in a letter telling him his comments were being forwarded to their medieval art department for review.
About four months later, Helen C. Evans, the museum's curator for Byzantine art, sent him an email.
'You are, of course, correct about the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian,' she wrote to him in January while inviting him back to the museum to meet with her.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-finding-mistake-map-visit.html#ixzz1tuQe0llR
Bravo Benjamin!
