A real-time public restoration of a 19th-century masterpiece has become a hit attraction in France.
Every Thursday morning at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, visitors with a free reservation can take a guided tour to witness the ongoing restoration of Gustave Courbet’s , which was donated to the French state in 1881 and is undergoing its first major touch-ups in more than 130 years.
Expected to last from a year to 15 months, the project entails three painstaking phases, which typically would have been carried out behind closed doors. “It’s fascinating,” one visitor told Le Monde. “It made me want to come back in the coming months to see how the project is progressing.”