Digital Art History  

This guide is inspired by

Transitioning to a Digital World Art History, Its Research Centers, and Digital Scholarship
A Report to the The Samuel H. Kress Foundation and The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media George Mason University
By Diane M. Zorich Cultural Heritage Consultant dzorich@mindspring.com
May 2012

Teaser excerpts below to get you to click on the full report

The examples listed below, while not comprehensive, give a sense of the type of research art historians might undertake with the aid of digital technologies: 

• Visualizing a work of art in its place over time, e.g., viewing a painting, sculpture, or building in relationship to the environment around it and the changes to that environment over time.
•  Tracking and visually displaying changes in the nature of an object over time, such as a sculpture that was originally polychrome but over the ages lost its color, became damaged, was repaired, etc.
• Visually mapping/tracking works of art as they moved across space and time, from the workshop where they were created to the locations where they were bought, sold, exhibited, stolen, repatriated, etc.
• Using art history’s iconic databases as large‐scale datasets (rather than just searchable resources) to reveal patterns, trends and insights that put forth new research questions.
•  Mining collections of oral history audio and/or transcripts as datasets to explore patterns and address specific research questions about artists, genres, schools, etc.

Some Barriers:

• Art history is a solitary endeavor
• Art history is a conservative discipline
• Biases like belief that print is the only valid form of publication OR anything that makes that process easier is “not pure scholarship.”
• Outmoded reward and evaluation systems
• The perfect is the enemy of the good (Beta is not a welcome concept)
• Skepticism about digital art history and new media
• Resource and funding issues
• Access to images
• Limitations to linking collections virtually

Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation
Volume 29 Issues 1–2 (March–June 2013)
BOARD-APPROVED SPECIAL ISSUE: Digital Art History

See also DIGITAL HUMANITIES GUIDE

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