Young historian spots museum error

NEW YORK, May 3 (UPI) -- A budding historian, age 13, is being lauded for finding an error in a map on permanent display in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Benjamin Lerman Coady, a seventh-grader from West Hartford, Conn., with a passion for history, visited the Museum with his mother last summer, toured an exhibit on Byzantine art and noted a map, drawn to display the Byzantine Empire at its largest in the 6th Century, was incorrect. The conquests of Spain and part of Africa were missing, and Benjamin informed a docent, who instructed him to fill out a form, the Hartford (Conn.) Courant reported Thursday.

"The front desk didn't believe me," he said. "I'm only a kid."

But curator Helen Evans did, and after several months of review sent him an e-mail reading, in part, "You are, of course, correct about the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian."

The Museum is considering adding a second map to the display to correct the error, and invited Benjamin back for a private tour, the newspaper said.

While the young historian takes pride in his attention to detail, his aspirations go beyond history and museums.

"I want to move to Greenwich and open a modern exotic car shop," he said.

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