This Old Text and Taxonomy: Renovating Art Historical Documentation

Certain forms of art historical documentation, such as catalogues raisonnés, have become authoritative statements of an artist’s relation to the canon, with patterns and habits that have evolved regarding descriptive terms, classifications, and language. Yet traditional publication formats and controlled vocabularies don’t always accommodate content that requires reinterpretation in light of current developments in art history and society itself.

The digital turn presents challenges and opportunities: how can we include artists, media, ways of working that don’t fit rubrics established long ago? How can we bridge the past to the present, including contextualizing language and images that have different and sometimes troubling meanings today? How can we update the ways in which we present data while preserving the intent of traditional forms of documentation? How can these changes in turn provide new data, ideas, and possibilities to art history and adjacent fields?

This panel seeks to reveal ways in which art historians, scholars of digital art history, archivists, catalogue raisonné professionals, and other practitioners are renovating long-standing structures and recasting controlled vocabularies to account even more accurately for the work of individual artists and enrich the contributions made by art historical documentation. Stories and analyses of how content is being reexamined as well as creative publication choices—including catalogues raisonnés among other forms of monographic art historical study—are welcome.

Keywords:
Topics: Digital Humanities
Topics: Art History
Topics: Historiography
Topics: Library and Archival Studies
Topics: Collections

Chair:

Abigael MacGibeny, Joan Mitchell Catalogue Raisonné

Abstract Submissions Closed

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