Nasothek

Look! It's a collection of noses! Where'd they come from? Futility Closet explains. See, the philosophy of preserving ancient art changed. In the 19th century, art museum curators would replace the missing noses on ancient Greek and Roman statues with replacement noses, to make them look whole and original. Later, preservationists decided that adding parts hundreds of years later actually ruined the authenticity of those ancient statues, so the replacement noses were removed. Sometimes those noses were collected and displayed, and such a collection is called a Nasothek. The Nasothek pictured here is from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum in Copenhagen. -via Nag on the Lake