When engaging in the visual analysis and communication of cultural collections and other types of complex historical data, scholarly or public audiences rarely get to see their multidimensional richness. Commonly, visualization tools require analysts to selectively ‘cut’ into the complexity of the data to highlight and project particular asp…[Read more]

The documentation of performing arts by means of databases is a challenging task for several reasons. Primarily, this has to do with the absence of a central, sizeable object that can be described and quantified. Any information collected in a database for performing arts thus seems to be of second order, paraphrasing what cannot be reproduced.…[Read more]

The goal of this paper is twofold: first to define “research data” in a humanities context through a discussion of the ways in which humanities researchers create and aggregate image collections, and second to address the processes by which academic libraries and information professionals can play an active role in supporting the treatment and per…[Read more]

The two books of Robert M. Pirsig have been milestones for Design Theory through the development of a Metaphysics of Quality. This article analyses the design history of his two books that have been in print for more than 40 years. The editions range from cheap mass-market paperbacks to gilded collectors’ hardcovers. The underlying challenge for a…[Read more]

Article for the exhibition catalogue “Hagenbund. A European network of modernism 1900 to 1938” (2014)

Digital images with metadata contain unique potential for research into the history of the art market. The embedding of digital images in a database allows for the possibility of an association with their historical context due to the presence of metadata, which includes economic data, such as the provenance chain, as well as information about…[Read more]

On the Crisis of Creation is a short comic about the comic artists’ equivalent of a writer’s block.

This is a digital project developed as part of the Spring 2019 MSU Digital Humanities Faculty Learning Community for use in an upcoming course on Soviet & East European Contemporary Art. The project equips students with the technical and conceptual tools for building and maintaining personal research collections for art history research.

Creative non-fiction/semi-academic reflective piece on seeing Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night for the first time in person at the Museum of Modern Arts.

A lexicon like the Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (Austrian Biographical Dictionary) seems to be as all in one cast because it is built on a set of formal rules for writing articles and some strict but basic criteria for the incorporation of new entries. The human reader can find information within that resource to a wide ra…[Read more]

Article from the proceedings of the conference “Europa baut auf Biographien”

Behind every printed national biography is a board of editors responsible for finding established scholars to write the biographies. The personal and institutional networks, the scientific and ideological socialization of these authors have a significant influence on the biographical constructs and narratives they have designed, and thus also…[Read more]

From 1852 the Hôtel Drouot was the space where the French auctioneers (Commissaires-Priseurs) – who held a stately sanctioned monopoly – organized their auctions. By processing data from the art auction catalogue repertory by Frits Lugt and the extended version Art Sales Catalogues Online, it is possible to map the networks of art marketing at…[Read more]

The following text presents an online project, which has been developed since April 2007 with a duration of five years on the initiative of the Kunstgeschichtliches Institut in Frankfurt and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, together with the partner institutions Städel Museum and Historisches Museum in Frankfurt and jointly financed by…[Read more]

The city of Lucca was never limited to the urban area within the walls. Autumn and winter would be lived in the city palazzo, with life concentrating upon commercial activities enlivened by entertainments such as music and theatre. In spring and summer life was relocated en masse to the villa. This article outlines the essentials of Lucchese…[Read more]

The garden theatre can take many forms: it can erupt forth in an explosion of water and sound as in the teatro d’acqua; it can appear carved into a hedge as a teatro di verzura; or it can calmly wait to be filled with performers as in a teatro avanti il palazzo. The garden theatre was first a feature of the Baroque garden in Italy, before f…[Read more]

This article invites us to consider the usefulness of iconography as a method to describe the subjects represented in medieval works of art. In this study, a greater emphasis has been put on investigating the epistemological implications resulting from the use of that method, and the biases that may appear in the process of transforming images…[Read more]

Computational analysis of the potential historical professional networks inferred from surviving print impressions offers novel insight into the evolution of early modern artistic printmaking in Europe. This analysis traces a longue durée print production history that examines the changing ways in which different regional printmaking communities…[Read more]

Companion materials for “Introductory Digital Humanities Curriculum for the High School English Classroom,” also available on Humanities Commons.