Artl@s Lecture Series in DAH

2023-2024 Artl@s/Visual Contagions Lecture Series in Digital Art History.

Do we really need Digital Art History?

Organizers: Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (UNIGE), Catherine Dossin (Purdue University), and Nicola Carboni (UNIGE)

The Artl@s Lectures are a series of conversations that Artl@s will organize throughout the 2023-2024 academic year on the theme of "Narrowing the Divide: A Dialogue between Art History and Digital Art History".

The field of Digital Art history is currently experiencing a notable shift towards establishing its autonomy as a distinct discipline. However, its survival is challenged by the limitations of its investigations. The lack of relationships between computational effort and traditional analysis often limits the generation of novel insight. Digital Art History (DAH) risks becoming a mere spectacle when it relies solely on stunning visualizations without engaging in rigorous research questions. Conversely, art history limits itself from harnessing robust methodologies by disregarding computational approaches.

The digital approach increasingly demands advanced technical skills, thereby often placing art historians in a position where they lack the means and expertise to engage with it. Yet, art historians possess a keen awareness of the pressing issues within the discipline and possess the knowledge of which corpuses are relevant for addressing them. They could potentially provide their questions and corpuses to experts in Digital Art History (DAH).

Hence, it is crucial to establish more frequent and substantive opportunities for collaboration between these two approaches. The 2023-2024 Artl@s Conversation Series aims to cultivate a convergence between the field of Digital Art History and the discipline of Art History. The exchange of ideas and results among digital art history specialists, art historians, and the audience will foster a deeper understanding of the possibilities and implications of computational methodologies in the study of art history.

Each event will facilitate a unique encounter between two experts engaged in overlapping subject areas but employing markedly different methodologies. Within this framework, art historians will put forth inquiries and collections to experts in digital approaches, while scholars in Digital Art History will present the outcomes of their methodologies, along with the aspects they would readily suggest for monographic or non-digital explorations. The aim is to foster collaborations and a heightened mutual understanding of the outcomes between the realms of art history and Digital Art History.

These gatherings provide valuable opportunities for aspiring PhD students in digital humanities and art history to discover new subjects and gain insights into the notable progress being made in both disciplines.