Women Architects and World Fairs
Museums in the Digital World
Digitization has become particularly important for cultural institutions to document and preserve objects. With this new tool, museums can share their collections online. Archives and libraries can share their manuscripts with the public. Most of the cultural institutions are using facsimiles to reach their audiences electronically. While this tool opens opportunities for more projects to document objects, specialists still struggle with the limitations of digitization.
Emma Stanford reflected in her book chapter on how digitalization has increasingly been used in museums and art institutions. Her chapter aims to explain the limitations of digitization and offers a guide for creating high-quality digital images. [1]She pointed out how many institutions, such as the British Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, took advantage of the recent technology and could share their collections online. Many museums were indeed able to digitize most of their collections and share them with the public. On the other hand, many museums, like museums in the Middle East and North Africa, cannot do the same because of the lack of funding.
A critical question Stanford raised was which objects should be digitized. This question is a debate between cultural heritage preservation professionals. They always ask themselves which object needs to be digitized or preserved for the next generation. The answer is that each piece of history is essential and should be digitized. Digitization is a tool to share objects with the public and scholars and saves objects for future generations. In case we lose an object in the future, at least this would allow cultural institutions to share it with the public and scholars. One example to support this point is a historical manuscript called “Description of Egypt.” The book was written by French scientists in 1809. Unfortunately, the book was burned on 25 January 2011. It was the only copy, and humankind has lost it forever.
One of the other problems of digitization is the visual size of an object. Stanford points out that digitization sometimes differs from actual objects, and I agree with her. I have seen this problem in many museums, like the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Khufu’s statue, which is only 4 cm (about 1.57 in) but looks more significant than that in the image. Of course, this is one of the limitations, but I think with better interpretation and description of an object, this problem would be resolved. Another problem is the quality and the resolution of an image. I believe with the rapid progress of technology; this problem will also be resolved.
Now, cultural heritage organizations tend to share their digital images internationally with other organizations instead of digitizing new images, which will reduce their budget for digital projects. I believe in saving funding for more digital projects, and institutions should collaborate to ensure no overlapping of digitizing. For example, instead of digitizing the same objects twice, other objects can be digitized to save effort and money and allow more objects to be digitized. Many objects are still not digitized and need to be digitized. One example is a collection at storage in Middle Egypt. Digitization will introduce audiences to new collections hidden in storage and protect these objects from being stolen.
An example was an object was found in Abydos, Egypt. The director of the team digitized the objects after she excavated them. After a few years, she found those objects online for sale and was able to identify them and bring them back to the Egyptian government. The digitization and share collection will expand the audience and protect these projects from theft.
Of course, the budget has been one of the main problems museums and cultural institutions have dealt with for decades. Now, with the age of digitization, these institutions struggle to find funding to fund their digital humanities projects. Stanford argues that cultural institutions are working hard to secure digital project funding. We can see that many government institutions and nonprofits are more likely interested in funding digital projects than other projects. For example, the National Endowment of Humanities offers different funds for digital projects.
Digitization has increased the number of scholars because scholars can now study the site without visiting museums or sites. Stanford made a great argument about the benefit of digitization and how to make art history more accessible to the public. Also, digitization software offers new methods for visualization, like 3D models and showing objects closer to the original state. Her chapter is beneficial for those who are interested in the study of digital humanities. However, she focused her arguments on the United States, Europe, and Japan; these countries are significantly developed in digital use. I wish she could emphasize the role of digitization in other countries like India and Egypt and how big institutions like MET or BM can help museums in these countries to digitize their collections.
In addition, Stanford ignored the role digitization plays in protecting cultural heritage. I hope she can light this point in her chapter and explain it in depth for the reader to understand how this tool offers sources to preserve the past for the audiences. Before this tool, humankind had lost many artifacts. For example, the government of Libya lost a storage collection at the Bank of National Libya. During the Arab Spring, those collections were stolen, and because the Libyan government did not have any images from the collection, they could not find it and bring it back to Libya.
Overall, I want to say the reading this week helped me better understand digitization. Digitation for cultural heritage sites was interesting to me as a public historian. I believe these tools would allow me to expand my audience and open the door for more projects to protect cultural heritage.
[1] Emma Stanford, “A Field Guide to Digital Surrogates: Evaluating and Contextualizing a Rapidly Changing Resource,” Routledge Companion, pp. 203-214.
“The changing research practices of the art historian” seems akin to saying “the changing color of white paint on my walls”. Art history defined by Matthew Long and Roger C. Shonfeld as “a broad field that can be defined in ways that include or exclude certain specializations and proximate disciplines” is not a field that can be thought of as particularly dynamic (Long and Shonfeld). Although this is a generalization that does not include all art historians, the reader can imagine my surprise at Long and Shonfeld’s choice of title.
Particularly in a digital humanities context, art historians have traditionally shied away from “overusing” (read: incorporating in any meaningful way) technology into their practice. LIDAR, digital archives, 3D modeling, or AI seem like library sciences — or worse, archaeology– rather than art history. Despite the identity problems of the art historian, Long and Shonfeld make compelling arguments for the practicality and usefulness of digital practices in art history.
Creating exhibitions, museum publications, and special collections are all examples of ways in which art historians can benefit from a digital presence. We consider ourselves to be interdisciplinary by cherry picking practices and interests to support our own arguments, but we forget that it is a two way street. Long and Shonfeld suggest that incorporating digital practices into the discipline can act as supplementary material to other disciples.
Despite the supposed unwillingness of art historians to incorporate digital art history into their studies, Paul Jaskot suggests that art historians have been using digital avenues for quite some time (Jaskot). He identifies four primary methodological areas in digital art history: digital storytelling, text-based approaches, network analysis, and spatial analysis. Social network analysis and spatial analysis have been particularly influential as well due to their ability to handle large datasets and address complex historical questions. The importance of coordination and collaboration among researchers to gather a larger body of evidence is crucial to creating more complex and fruitful databases for social art history. Increasing data alone does not lead to more accurate conclusions, drawing a parallel to the historical debate between Ernst Gombrich and Arnold Hauser regarding the relationship between art and social structures. The inclusion of the Gombrich/Hauser debate would not be lost on any classically-trained (read: uppity) art historian. By speaking the language of the people who have historically been disinterested in progress, Jaskot seems to say, “look, you can have both! The old masters and the new ways can actually coexist, rather than in conflict.”
However, my biggest takeaway from Jaskot’s reading was that by including another dimension for our studies, we can actually enrich our understanding of the objects. Maps, 3D models, and VR make buildings seem like, well, buildings; rather than a flat image on a projector. We forget all too often that people walk in and around these spaces, voices carry, and floors creak. Considering Chartres Cathedral as a “French gothic cathedral which finished in 1252 with a cross-plan and a rich sculptural program on the portals” is accurate, but reductive. People were baptized, married, fought, dutifully attended church, city meetings and more for the last 800ish years. Art historians are constantly on the hunt to see the object for what it is, and digital humanities can assist in bridging the gap between then and now. I think that the pedagogical benefits of incorporating digital art history are the most interesting aspects of digital humanities, but the possibilities are endless.
The Image: Rosina Ferrara, Head of a Capri Girl, John Singer Sargent 1878, Sargent capture Rosina with such a delicate clarity that has solidified this drawing as one of my all time favorites. The Google Arts and Culture app had a feature where users could upload a seflie and it would find their art doppleganger. This was mine, and it’s location at the Denver Art Museum felt all too prophetic. It’s not wholly academic, curatorial, or archival, rather a fun possibility of what digital art history can accomplish. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Singer_Sargent_-Rosina_Ferrara,_Head_of_a_Capri_Girl-_Google_Art_Project.jpgIn How to Curate Your Digital Identity as an Academic Kelli Marshall writes about how to carve out, or claim, a digital identity that accurately reflects your academic and professional life. This is their core thesis, and the article serves as a kind of how-to that is specifically directed to academics that don’t have tenure or a long list of published works.
Marshall earned her PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities so it seems they are especially invested in drawing cross discipline connections. Marshall has 12 years of experience as a college professor teaching on a broad range of topics that generally fall under the umbrella of media studies. It seems like her interest in more traditional modes of media like film and literature eventually lead her to teach and write about new media like social media, web design and functionality, and web presence. After learning her academic background and teaching experience, it’s not a surprise that she wrote an article focusing on digital identity and it seems she is well qualified to write about this topic.
I’ve struggled with ideas around my own digital identity, but more from a work-life balance point of view. I’ve been thinking a lot about whether there is a way to carve out strong digital identities to reflect all the facets of who I am or who I want to show the world that I am. Sometimes I don’t want my digital identity to only portray that I’m a graduate student, academic, archivist/librarian – maybe I want to lead with my more personal, creative sides. I acknowledge that one of Marshall’s first suggestions, a personal website, could be a way around or through this issue. A personal website leaves room for sections that are more academically driven and others that are more personal in focus but I still kick around the idea that, unlike in real life, we can’t choose to reveal or conceal aspects of ourselves so easily. We have to curate – that word choice is so accurate and appropriate.…
Review of The Barnes Foundation Digital Collection
The Barnes Museum, located in Philadelphia, PA, is an art collection that highly emphasizes education. Their online collection is one of the most navigable museum websites I have visited.
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