Andrew Tallon

Andrew J. Tallon (12 March 1969 – 16 November 2018) was a Belgian-American art historian. He used lasers to create a precise model of Notre-Dame de Paris, among other buildings.

Early life and education Tallon was born on 12 March 1969 in Leuven, Belgium to mother Mary Beth Tallon Vander Vennet and father Andrew F. Tallon. In the fourth grade, Tallon lived in Paris while his mother worked on a dissertation in theater history. He attended high school in the US, graduating from Shorewood High School in Wisconsin. While enrolled, however, he took every class taught by Robert Mark—an engineer specializing in Gothic architecture and construction. He received an MA at Paris-Sorbonne University

Career Beginning in 2007, Tallon worked at Vassar College in the Department of Art. Tallon described himself as "obsessed" with Notre-Dame de Paris. He used laser scanners to map the interior and exterior of the Notre-Dame, as well as 45 other historical buildings. In addition to Paris, other French cathedrals he mapped were in Bourges, Chartres, and Sens. Along with Stephen Murray, Tallon initiated the Mapping Gothic France project, which was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Mapping Gothic France is an open source project created to "establish linkages between the architectural space of individual buildings, geo-political space, and the social space resulting from the interaction (collaboration and conflict) between multiple agents—builders and users".

In December 2014, Tallon mapped the Canterbury Cathedral in England, collecting 5.5 billion data points over the course of two and a half days. Tallon repositioned the scanner slightly fewer than one hundred times to obtain comprehensive coverage. This work resulted in the first accurate sectional views of the cathedral.

Awards and honors Tallon contributed to a television documentary called Building the Great Cathedrals which first aired on Nova (part of PBS) in 2010. The program received two Emmy nominations: for Outstanding Science and Technology Programming, and for Outstanding Cinematography, News Coverage/Documentaries.

An art exhibition based on Tallon's work was displayed in Notre-Dame, called "Notre-Dame of Paris: Nine Centuries in the Life of a Cathedral".

Personal life Tallon was married to Marie Tallon-Daudruy and had four children. on 16 November 2018 at his home in Poughkeepsie, New York.

Selected publications