Category: ARTH 851 Fall 2026 (Page 2 of 2)

From left to right: Brigid Hynes-Cherin, Peter Hynes, Arleen Hynes, and Timothy John Hynes

Week two: 8/25/2026

“The nature of the gap between original and surrogate may change as technology improves, but it can never be entirely closed. In fact, the strengths of digital surrogates lie in their differences: their versatility, their independence from time and place, their potential for creative
interaction.” — Emma Stanford in “A Field Guide to Digital Surrogates”

Any museum professional, archivist, or librarian will be able to recognize the significance of digitization, or “digital surrogates,” to the field today. Immense resources, labor, and time have already been dedicated to the digitization of all manner of documents and it’s unlikely that demand for such projects will stop soon. From an accessibility and preservation standpoint, the benefit to a digitized archive is readily apparent. Information held on physical documents can now be preserved where it otherwise might have been at risk of damage or degradation. People from across the globe can now view documents and artifacts held at archives, libraries, and museums, so long as they have access to the internet. There are so many more benefits to well-done digitization projects, like the potential to easily transcribe and translate digitized documents with OCR.

Of course, it is worth interrogating any technology or methodology used by archivists and art historians, particularly when so many resources are directed their way (at times, at the risk of other kinds of projects). In “A Field Guide to Digital Surrogates: Evaluating and Contextualizing a Rapidly Changing Resource,” scholar Emma Stanford outlines the long history of “surrogates” (or, images of art objects) as an essential resource to art historians, while also making a close evaluation of all the complications and pitfalls that this populate this practice in the digital age. Institutional structures, and failings, account for many of these—for example, it is impossible for most institutions to digitize all of their archives, leaving the decision of which objects and documents should be digitized as a curatorial one, and therefore impacted by many of the same factors that continuously shape curatorial decisions. In the case of the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, this meant that more manuscripts were digitized according to what interested big donors. Even on a smaller scale, editing through omission is one huge way that digitization can distort documents. Stanford points out a number of examples: long manuscripts which only have a few “important” pages digitized, how digitized images often crop the objects and documents they capture, or the inability of photography to capture the tactility of objects and papers.

In reality, so many of the issues that plague digitization efforts have to do with funding and labor, even though Stanford does not always acknowledge this outright. What archives and museums can actually afford to have a lengthy and costly digitization project depends largely on which institutions have funding, which is largely dependent on complex socio-economic factors. There is also the question of usability and access once the archives are actually digitized. As lengthy a process that scanning and archiving digitized documents can be, designing the interfaces through which users access these documents is just as extensive. The ability (or inability) to search for accurately described objects is at the center of what makes a digitized archived accessible (or not). Ideally, each archive would be able to provide extensive tags for objects, and would reliably be able search from the metadata of objects, but this is often not the case. When I designed a digital archive in Omeka for a collection at my undergraduate university, I was certainly not leaving detailed tags for each item. I was the only research assistant working on the project and I simply did not have time, nor was I being paid enough, to make the archive as accessible and searchable as I would have liked it to be.

Of the above issues with digitization efforts, most are somewhat solvable given enough time and money. There’s one issue that remains genuinely irreconcilable: that a digital surrogate will never be able to capture the physical object in its entirety. Art historians know this well, which is why they often advise students to see works of art in person if at all possible. Stanford believes that rather than being a weakness, the inherent difference of a digital surrogate can be a strength:

“In fact, the strengths of digital surrogates lie in their differences: their versatility, their independence from time and place, their potential for creative interaction. The most effective digital surrogates leverage these traits.” (Stanford, 211).

Recently, I have been able to see these strengths with a newfound emotional potency. My cousin and I are currently embarking on a digitization project for my late Aunt Brigid’s family and travel photos, of which there are thousands. Such a project is a serious archival task, but it’s allowed me to view the work of digitization through new eyes, outside the confines of my professional life. I have a large family (21 first cousins), and I can feel how much it means to everyone to have these images of loved ones, so many of whom have passed, accessible and preserved for future generations.

While nothing can replace the affective experience of holding one of these photographs in your hands, this project can open up new opportunities for family members to see their history where otherwise we might have to wait for another family reunion, wedding, or funeral to view them. When I approach this topic from a critical art historical perspective, I see many of the gaps and failures of digital surrogates as a sign to be wary of them. However, this project has given me assurance of the real-life significance of digitization. Whether or not it’s apparent in the moment, you never know the importance digital surrogates might hold to a researcher or a private individual.

Ultimately, the project of digitization is an important and worthwhile one, but it’s equally important to consider the labor of museum professionals, interns, and volunteers, many of whom may be victim to the exploitative labor practices of a field that so often lacks the money and resources to back otherwise worthy ambitions. It is with this institutional structure in mind that we could continue to acknowledge the limitations of digitization, while advocating for the laborers doing their best to surmount them.

This post is a log of first exploration in digital art history. It’s a methodology which feels foreign in that I’ve never called my research skills “digital,” but familiar in that I have always conducted research with the help of online databases and resources. This is what I thought when I first heard the term, thinking it was the use of online tools and databases to conduct art-based research. And while digital sites are the tools for conducting digital art history, the reason for the methodology lies in the new design for scholarship digital forms inspire, which in turn generate new perspectives for reading history. Unpacking the community, material implications, and progressive futures digital tools make possible for research is the topic of this post.

Digital art history, by my understanding, is a term which refers to digitized networks, often activated by contemporary technologies, which invite new methods of critical engagement for historians studying art. The importance of how we critically engage with art using digital tools varies dependent on the goal of its praxis. In “The Digital Transformation of Art History,” digital humanist Harald Klinke recognized digital art history as built atop the same foundation art history has always relied on: data. He interprets our effort to describe, compare, and contextualize art objects as a from of visual data, which we record through publication. Klinke sees the use of computers, which can process large quantities of data with more accuracy and efficiency, to be a better model for visualizing and translating large swathes of data for interpretation. Also known as “distance viewing,” better processing broadens the perspectives of researchers who reorganize their interpretations of individual artists or objects in context with a larger number of data points.

While Klinke thinks back before the digital age, Jaskot thinks forward to understand how digital tools reform our interpretations of history, as well as our social relationship to art objects. In “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art,” Jaskot argues for the use of digital tools as a method for unsettling an author’s bias for what they interpret an object to mean in its social context. Unlike the limited viewpoint of human scholars, digital tools visualize without biased for symmetry or organization, balancing, “aspects of that very tension between uniformity and chaos.” The ability of digital tools to present the bigger picture engages art with audiences and ideas beyond even the scope of its intended use and maker.

This material affect, linked through digital networks, is also a concern of art historian Alison Langmead’s. She cites slides as reproduction of original artwork, then states in “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities:” “Representation is a form of interpretation and remediation, from the framing chosen, to the color balance used, to the precise technology selected. It is not a neutral act; it is materially transformative.” Indeed, our continued distance from the physical art object paired with our conflation of the image as equal to the object positions digital tools with the potential to expand or collapse our understanding of what the art object is. Additionally, Langmead sees the future of art history as a collaborative effort, citing the end of the slides library as the beginning of isolation for working on research. She sees the public yet unfinished nature of digital art historical projects as a way forward, producing knowledge, “not because it is heading towards a conclusion, but because it will always be in a state of creation and enactment.”

The ulitimate path goal that all three authors see for digital art history is public collaboration. While I have no experience participating in digital art projects, I can speak on the transformative path of art and educational channels thriving across the internet for years. Growing up as a teen on the internet, my first introduction to visual analysis was taught through educational YouTubers, who created long essays on media relevant to my interests. Such accessible content introduced me to why art history is important, and opened my participation in larger dialogue on the art through slides. Both digital databases and online communities are collaborative efforts to extend knowledge beyond oneself. And unlike digital communities built around an individual creator or story, digital art history’s biggest challenge is its retention. As touched on in class, many computer programs shut down due to low user counts or profits. These retention issues which may be aided by stepping outside of archivist projects to learn both about digital educational content.

In his article “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” Paul B. Jaskot outlines the ways in which he believes digital methodologies could alter how art historians frame their questions and offers some examples of what new frameworks could result from the usage of digital tools. Jaskot doesn’t just ask the question, “How can we use digital art history methods to support current research methods?” but goes further to ask, “How can digital art history as a methodology change the nature of the field?” He begins his article by placing digital art history in the context of critical art history by first addressing that in order for digital art history (and digital humanities in general) to thrive, it cannot be ignored that digital tools have often been the product of profit-seeking corporations. If we are to look at digital art history as a new methodology, we must acknowledge that we are beginning with a set of tools and frameworks that have roots in white, male, wealthy, Euro-centric perspectives. Jaskot uses this as a transition to his main argument that digital art history methods are uniquely positioned to analyze a much larger swath of society beyond dominant narratives, allowing bulk data to tell a story rather than granular interpretation of objects. A particularly salient point made is the vital difference between “digitized” and “digital” art history; Jaskot points to Johanna Drucker’s essay “Is There a ‘Digital’ Art History?” as the origin of this line of thinking, but ultimately finds that Drucker is still viewing digital art history as an extension of traditional art history frameworks and methodologies. To Jaskot, this is still a digitized point of view rather than a digital one, and in response he calls for a more nuanced analysis of the interplay of art historians’ tools, methods, and topics that ideally moves away from single-object focused meaning-making and into a wider analysis. Ultimately, Jaskot is advocating for using the disruption caused in the field by digital tools as an occasion for a more critical re-examination of current art historical research, allowing new questions and connections to be developed in conjunction with new high-capacity digital research methods.

In his current research, Jaskot uses the method of visualization to more critically examine cultural forces at work in his area of study. The project he discusses in this article that supports this use of wider frameworks for meaning-making was one that he published with Ivo Van Der Graaff, titled, “Historical Journals as Digital Sources: Mapping Architecture in Germany, 1914–24.” Jaskot uses some of the final resulting maps generated from this project in his article on digital art history to touch on one instance in which large-scale analysis can be more successful at illustrating relationships and their interplay with overarching social structures. His work is uniquely posed to explore wide-scale geographic visualizations; as a scholar of German architecture in the early to mid 20th century, he often focuses on Nazi Germany and the ways in which construction was used to enact violence. This topic is so embroiled in place and imperialist expansion,and benefits from the opportunity to impart scale visually. In his mapping project, he and his co-author Van Der Graaff had the goal of analyzing whether the process of construction itself was meaningful in the larger social and cultural landscape of Germany at this time. They describe the role of social art history in this process as “[…] not to explain a few monuments but—through a focus on what was built, where, and when—to increase our knowledge about the very social structures in which architects and buildings dynamically participate.” Van Der Graaff and Jaskot’s usage of tools in this case also provides an excellent example of the fundamental shifts in question-asking and meaning-making that Jaskot refers to in his article; rather than interpreting a topic through the lens of “great men” or overarching movements, they were able to look at construction as an expression of systemic changes.

I found this article to be an illuminating introduction to digital art history as a practice; it gives a clear idea of what makes digital humanities research different from current mindsets around sociocultural research. One of the reasons I chose to delve into Jaskot’s research a little further was because it truly is a compelling use case for digital art history methods that addresses how we can best utilize the absolute dearth of information that exists in repositories worldwide. The idea of “bulk” associated with digital records can often be framed as a challenge for archivists, and as a special collections worker who has studied archival theory, it was honestly slightly refreshing to see a researcher take that idea and put a more positive spin on it. Every record is a potentiality; having many records to comb through for relevant information forces creativity in their navigation. He also touches on some foundational appraisal theory with the line, “[…] more data does not equal more truth.” This resonated with me, and clarified Jaskot’s point that research (and especially digital methods of conveying research) is not necessarily a definitive statement, but an illustration of a specific web of relationships. The goal of creating a GIS map system such as this is not to lay bare the political and cultural landscape of Nazi Germany, but to illustrate patterns that may indicate connections between historical context and architectural form. This push and pull between retaining the characteristics of individual objects while at the same time examining their context in a wider system is certainly a tension more easily explored through digital tools that have fewer restraints on form. However, I would be curious to hear more about Jaskot’s opinion on how spatial analysis and social network analysis have facilitated the most “productive questions” of the four methodological areas he lists. “Digital storytelling” is a very wide and somewhat general description of a methodology with what seems like the capability to encourage more laypeople to engage with critical art history thought, and I would be interested in hearing about why exactly Jaskot has chosen not to examine this methodology further. Although, I will grant that since he is an architectural historian, spatial analysis is a far more natural expression of his research.

Works Referenced

Jaskot, Paul B. “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods.” Visual Resources 35, nos. 1–2 (2019): 21–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973762.2019.1553651.

Jaskot, Paul B., and Ivo Van Der Graaff. “Historical Journals as Digital Sources: Mapping Architecture in Germany, 1914–24.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 76, no. 4 (2017): 483–505.

23 August 2026

For my first blog post of the semester I chose to examine Alison Landmead’s “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities” (2018). I found that the article was a comprehensive, yet rightfully critical overview of the benefits and pitfalls that art and architectural historians often encounter in using visual reproductions of objects in their work. With Langmead serving as the director of the Visual Media Workshop at the University of Pittsburgh and holding faculty positions in the Department of Art and Architecture and in the School of Computing and Information, I would expect that her work in the digital humanities significantly impacts how she approaches the field. See her bio here.

Landmead’s article begins with an overview of the different visual reproduction methods art and architecture historians have used in the past. Beginning with later slides and later adopting the 35mm film slide, art historians have long sought out reproductions of the works they study for research and classroom teaching. Unlike in English Literature for example, the corpus of work used by an art historian cannot be easily duplicated and mass produced, leading to issues of accessibility. Oftentimes art historians are working with unique pieces that are housed in museums—or worse, private collections—that cannot travel. Image reproductions in the form of slides have been essential in the field for decades to bring the corpus of work into the art historian’s office. 

But, as Landmead herself points out, image reproductions are riddled with unexpected distortions and errors that often go unnoticed by the untrained eye. Color in particular is difficult to capture, as environmental factors such as lighting can alter the way an image in captured on film. Moreover, slides naturally degrade over time, causing colors to fade and bleed. Scale and proportions are also difficult to capture, as 35mm slides were standardized in their proportions. Two-dimensional works of art translated relatively well to slides, but any object that has texture or is three-dimensional will lose certain aspects of its depth when translated to a two-dimensional medium. 

The transition from 35mm film slides to digital images around the turn of the twenty-first century has brought its own challenges to image “accuracy” for art historians. Digital images require computer screens to view, which can slightly alter the colors of an image from its original. Moreover, computer screens are available at a wide array of different resolutions depending on brand, age, and price, resulting in different viewing experiences from screen to screen. A Dell monitor may show a digital image of a painting to be more cool in tone than an iMac, greatly affecting the coloring of the image and disadvantaging scholars with lower-quality or older technology. Classroom projectors face the same issue in displaying digital images for teaching. Institutions with higher budgets may elect to purchase higher-quality projectors for their classrooms, disadvantaging students and academic departments with lower budgets in their studies. 

Beyond image accuracy, digital images bring their own preservation problems to the hands of digital humanities. While slides physically degrade over time, digital images can become corrupt or obsolete as technology advances, rendering them completely unusable. A slightly discolored 35mm slide can still be used with the caveat that it is discolored, but a corrupted digital file is oftentimes unsalvageable once damage has been done. Moreover, digital files have to be transferred from storage solution to storage solution as technology advances so they can still be accessed. This is a necessary step for researchers because as technology progresses, the systems used to access old storage solutions become more and more difficult to access. But files can become corrupt if not transferred properly, increasing the risk of losing years of visual resources. 

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Alison Langmead’s article provides an excellent case study for researchers in the humanities as a whole to incorporate the use of digital technologies in the way they conduct research. Langmead is correct in her argument that art and architectural historians have been using digital technologies for decades in their work, as there are few other disciplines in which scholars are so physically far removed from the material they study. Before the rise of lantern slides for academic use, art historians were forced to rely on “mass” produced copies (that is, more mass produced than the original works) such as prints or plaster casts for study, which were riddled with inaccuracies themselves. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s now fundamental “Laocoon: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry” (1766) is an excellent example of this. Written about the Laocöon statue group now housed in the Vatican Museums, Lessing’s essay was about a sculpture he only viewed from engravings, as he never actually travelled to Italy to see it in person. His essay was partly a response to Johann Joachim Wincklemann’s essays concerning the sculpture group (“History of Ancient Art”, 1756), but his thorough analysis of the aesthetics of the Laocöon group figures came from secondhand source materials. 

With all this in mind, what insights can art and architectural historians provide to the humanities as a whole in regards to digital methodologies? Digital tools oftentimes increase the accessibility of bodies of evidence, allowing researchers to access them from anywhere with an Internet connection. The rise of digitized materials such as books and archives in the last twenty years have shown that if materials are more accessible people will use them. But humanities scholars can incorporate digital tools into their methodologies as well as their source materials. Scholars of literature have increasingly turned towards tools such as text mining to look for new patterns in bodies of work that would otherwise be impossible to sort through. More humanities scholars have turned towards spatial mapping in the form of geographic information systems (GIS) to analysis patterns of movement and settlement, allowing for new breakthroughs in scholarship. 

At the end of the day, the humanities keep evolving as technology does, allowing scholars to develop new ways of thinking about their fields and sharing it. 

Historically, the field of art history is a discipline that uses the most current technology for photo and video projection. Now in the twenty-first century, the rapid innovation of analytical digital tools presents the discipline with the opportunity to integrate these tools into the field’s research methodology. Similar arguments and themes about the nature and future of art history in a digital world are articulated in articles by scholars Harald Klinke, Paul Jaskot, Alison Langmead, and Amanda Wasielewski and Anna Näslund.¹ Aside from the utility of digital methods for art historical analysis, Kelli Marshall and Miriam Posner explain the importance of an academic digital presence and practical suggestions for scholars.² The report compiled in 2014 by Matthew Long and Roger Schonfeld shares current methodological trends and recommendations for art history.³ The combination of these articles, blog articles by Posner and Marshall, and the report by Long and Schonfeld indicate that art history will be indistinguishable from digital art history in the future.

In Harald Klinke’s article, “The Digital Transformation of Art History,” he seeks to define digital art history and asserts that it will become more than another method, but redefine the field of art history itself.⁴ He introduces the idea of “distant viewing,” a method of examination that involves analyzing large quantities of images, that will make digital methods an essential part of the research process.⁵ This process takes into account not just “masterworks” but also “lesser” works that fall short of high volumes of scholarly analysis. Digital methods, Klinke asserts, allow a macro-analysis that facilitates art historical analysis. Klinke indicates how these methods are changing the field’s curricula, role of the teacher, the department, and the discipline as a whole.⁶ Klinke believes that art history should adapt to accommodate these changes by including software and digital resource instruction in the curriculum. With this mode of instruction, the teacher transforms into a guide, and the department must intentionally create spaces for collaboration. This transition into a digital space allows for greater transdisciplinary collaboration.

Similar concepts of transdisciplinary collaboration, digital methods for macro-analysis, and the necessity to create shared spaces for collaboration are also present in the articles by Jaskot and Langmead. Jaskot theorizes in his article “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” that digital methods can help analyze the relationships between art and society.⁷ He writes that through network and spatial analysis of large quantities of data, reminding the reader of Klinke’s concept of “distance-viewing,” patterns can be illuminated to provide evidence for scholars’ claims. Klinke outlines four areas that digital methods are helpful to the study of art history: digital storytelling, text-based approaches, network analysis, and spatial analysis.⁸ He gives preference to network and spatial analysis as methods that present the greatest potential for productive scholarly analysis. Jaskot writes that macro-analysis necessitates collaboration, a conclusion reached by Klinke and Langmead.⁹

In her article, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” Langmead explains that the humanities should not take innovations in technology for granted but instead continually engage with them. She points to the University of Pittsburgh’s Visual Media Workshop as an exemplary instance of productive engagement with technology and scholarly collaboration.¹⁰ Throughout her article, she traces the history of technology in the field of art history and asserts that a part of it is theatrical, like Wölflinn’s performance-like lectures in the late 19th-century.¹¹ While art history may have lost the social opportunity presented with the physical slide library in the digital age, Langmead explains that the University of Pittsburgh’s Visual Media Workshop is an example of a productive blend of scholarly collaboration and meaningful, analytical engagement with new digital resources.

Wasielewski and Näslund’s article, “Critical Digital Art History: An Introduction,” moves beyond defining digital art history and seeks to critically examine how digital tools have inevitably permeated the field.¹² Wasielewski and Näslund apply principles of critical theory to art history by looking inwards to be methodologically self-critical and to examine the social and political conditions of the external environment from the researcher’s subjective perspective.¹³ The authors also introduce the concept of the post-digital world, one that is inextricably linked to the digital sphere.¹⁴ Like Jaskot, Langmead, and Klinke, Wasielewski and Näslund outline the numerous ways in which scholars’ research inevitably uses digital tools to find sources, read, write, and collaborate with other scholars. Although digital practices may resign the scholar to the stereotype of the “isolated” researcher, a negative trend of the advent of the digital world that Langmead also refers to, digital resources open the field to wider audiences and present greater opportunities for collaboration.¹⁵

The report compiled by Long and Schonfeld examines the challenges and opportunities of the field of art history and offers practical recommendations to progress forward.¹⁶ The report, compiled over ten years ago, already found that art historians’ research unavoidably involves the internet and digital resources from primary and secondary source collection to compiling digital images for research. In its conclusion, Long and Schonfeld note that the methods and practices of art history research will increasingly rely on digital resources.¹⁷
Aside from the methodological application of digital resources, Marshall and Posner’s articles, written in a more conversational style, indicate the increasing necessity for academics to create and control their own digital presence.¹⁸ Both authors offer their own advice for maintaining an online presence specifically for academic professionals. Marshall suggests creating a website and building a social network while maintaining a consistent professional branding of oneself across these platforms, and Posner offers similar suggestions.¹⁹ These methods establish and protect the reputation of the academic professional.

After reading these materials, I noticed that my research and scholarly practice exists almost entirely within the digital space, but I do not use these resources beyond a more efficient substitute for notebooks and slides. Langmead’s article about using digital resources beyond reproductions of images made me reflect on ways that I could also incorporate macro-analysis or distance-viewing practices facilitated by digital resources that Klinke and Jaskot discussed in their respective articles. Marshall and Posner’s articles also made me consider my academic digital presence beyond personal connections. By standardizing my profile between my website and LinkedIn account, I hope to begin establishing my presence online as an academic. These articles indicate that digital resources will become essential to research methodology in the field of art history.

Notes
¹ Harald Klinke, “The Digital Transformation of Art History,” in Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, ed. Kathryn Brown (Routledge, 2020), 32-42.
Paul B. Jaskot, “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” Visual Resources 35:1-2 (2019), 21-33.
Alison Langmead, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, no. 12 (February 2018).
Amanda Wasielewski and Anna Näslund, “Critical Digital Art History: An Introduction,” in Critical Digital Art History: Interface and Data Politics in the Post-Digital Era, ed. Amanda Wasiewleski and Anna Näslund  (Intellect, 2024), 1-19.
² Kelli Marshall, “How to Curate Your Digital Identity as an Academic,” Chronicle of Higher Education (May 5, 2015).
Miriam Posner, “Creating Your Web Presence: A Primer for Academics,” ProfHacker (February 14, 2011).
³ Matthew Long and Roger C. Schonfeld, “Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians” (Ithaka S+R, 2014).
⁴ Klinke, “The Digital Transformation of Art History,” 32.
⁵ Klinke, “The Digital Transformation of Art History,” 34.
⁶  Klinke, “The Digital Transformation of Art History,” 36-38.
⁷ Jaskot, “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” 23, 30.
⁸ Jaskot, “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” 24.
⁹ Jaskot, “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” 26.
¹⁰ Langmead, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” 18.
¹¹  Langmead, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” 4-5.
¹² Wasielewski and Näslund, “Critical Digital Art History: An Introduction,” 2.
¹³ Wasielewski and Näslund, “Critical Digital Art History: An Introduction,” 4-5.
¹⁴ Wasielewski and Näslund, “Critical Digital Art History: An Introduction,” 5.
¹⁵ Langmead, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” 18.
Wasielewski and Näslund, “Critical Digital Art History: An Introduction,” 13.
¹⁶ Long and Schonfeld, “Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians,” 42-47.
¹⁷ Long and Schonfeld, “Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Art Historians,” 50.
¹⁸ Marshall, “How to Curate Your Digital Identity as an Academic.”
Posner, “Creating Your Web Presence: A Primer for Academics.”
¹⁹ Marshall, “How to Curate Your Digital Identity as an Academic.”

week one: 8/18/2026

“The struggles and wishes of our age are, undeniably, wrapped up in computational systems.” —Amanda Waiselewski and Anna Naslund in “Critical Digital Art History”

Digital Art History (or DAH) can refer to both the tools that art historians might use, and a way of thinking about art history. For this week in our seminar on “Alt-Methods: Digital Art History,” we were assigned a number of readings that sought to understand the history behind DAH and what it means to be a practitioner of “digital art history” today. As a defined discipline, it is far newer than art history proper; of course, the very tools that would produce DAH only came about with the widespread popularization of computers. Yet every author we read this week is quick to note just how important technology, whether digital or not, has always been to art historical research. Alison Langmead writes in her “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” that the adoption of the slide projector in the late-19th and early-20th centuries as represented a major shift in the field. Pioneered by art history professor Herman Grimm in the 1890’s, the projector (initially called a “Magic Lantern”) presented opportunities for art historians to teach simultaneous to students and lecture attendants viewing works of art. For a field that relies on the often unsteady ability of words to accurately represent images, it’s understandable that such a device was adopted quickly. Langmean continues, noting that throughout the 20th century, the slide room and the projector continued to be the main tools of art historians and art history teachers. Significantly, not only were these technologies incredibly useful to art historical research, the neccessity of a physical slide library where art historians (often professors and students at universities), were allowed a kind of third-space to meet and discuss their work.

What followed the overwhelming switch to digital cameras, screens, and computers was not a shift away from the use of images and projectors in art historical teaching, but rather, the abandonment of slides and slide rooms. DAH practitioners Harald Klinke and Paul Jaskot both note this discipline-wide shift to the digital as one of many ways in which all art historians are already “digital art historians,” despite the field as a whole tending to look down on novel and creative uses of digital technologies in research. As an art history graduate student, I can attest to the fact that despite my professors’ consistent reliance on digital images, computers, and projectors, very few of them seem to be entirely comfortable with digital technologies and most research outputs are the same as decades past (like research papers or manuscripts). Klinke proposes that art historians already dealing with digital data on a regular basis ought to look to DAH as a means of improving their data literacy: what he defines as the ability to understand and critique where, how, and why data was generated, and further, the ability to recognize the role of algorithms in the filtering of information.

Of course, most of DAH is conducted through projects that use data in digital systems which generate a myriad of formats. My experience in archival roles has given me a greater familiarity with DAH projects than my time as an art history student has. Because archives are interested in making a large amount of data accessible and interesting to the public, digital formats can present so many opportunities. I’ve worked on a couple different projects that had to do with digitizing archives and creating interfaces for audiences to view and sort the contents of the archives. One consideration in these contexts is how we (as archivists) can make our collections engaging, and formats like Omeka are really well suited to that. Another major consideration is that, often, only one researcher at a time can view archival documents in person unless they’ve been included in a physical exhibition. For both art historians and archivists, the tools proposed by DAH can present so many opportunities to expand our audiences. Much like slide rooms in the 1890’s, images and data can be democratized and made accessible through digital technologies. Paul Jaskot even argues that the opportunity to present information as maps might make art historical data itself more “democratized,” in the sense that where a paper typically requires a single narrative, the visualization data offers more potential loose associations.

Nonetheless, these visual data sets do still offer opportunities to present those single narratives—for better or worse. Maps, graphs, 3-D visualizations, and digital exhibits are all subject to distortion and narrativization by their authors. This is similarly true of the digital image which, like the slide image, is only one possible representation of an object. The central issue of reproductions versus reality presented in Walter Benjamin’s seminal “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanic Reproduction” (1935) remains truer than ever in our digital age. Yet, I would hope that art historians can embrace the digital technologies that we are already using, consider using new ones, and even begin to build data literacy in themselves and their students. The world is certainly not going to become less dominated by computers and digital data anytime soon.