The dossier on “Digital Art History” of Umanistica Digitale collects contributions on the study of methods, approaches, debates and experiments that developed over the last two decades in the field of Digital Art History, particularly along two lines of research that appear dominant today.
On the one hand, scholarly studies in Art History embrace a transdisciplinary approach to investigate several aspects that are constituents of the discipline: e.g. to formulate authorship attributions, reconstruct provenance, detect artworks’ genre and style, or investigate historical networks. To this extent, digital tools are employed to conduct and extend consolidated practices of research in Art History, though impacting its scope in many ways.
On the other hand, computational methodologies have significantly evolved in the last decades and have opened new frontiers in research and industry. The development of text-to-image software has raised new issues in the field of generative art and intellectual property, as well as the use of blockchain and NFT has reframed the role of cultural institutions toward the art market. Big Data analysis and Distant Viewing have also impacted the modes of art historical research, bringing structural and logical topics into the foreground, rather than as side products of scholarly investigations. Similarly, the predominant role of data visualisation for cultural heritage analysis significantly impacts decision-making processes, while the employment of interactive/immersive installations and the Web as instruments of participation and awareness introduce new practices for engaging with museum audiences, stakeholders and patrons.
This dossier welcomes proposals in both aforementioned areas of interest, privileging those pertaining to the field of the Digital Humanities, Computer Science, and Art History, as well as from other sectors that want to engage in the exploration of Digital Art History in a transdisciplinary perspective. Proposals should address one or more of the following topics:
Methodologies or approaches in digital art history
Quantitative analysis of art historical data
Computational studies of authorship, connoisseurship, provenance, genre, style, and other relevant enquiries
Distant viewing and big data analysis
Methods, experiments, approaches and lessons learnt using generative art, Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, and NFT
Important dates:
June 15th: articles submission
July 30th: peer-review
August 15th: rebuttal
September 15th: camera-ready
November: dossier publication as part of Umanistica Digitale
Please refer to the journal’s Author Guidelines to format your article. Articles should be submitted via the journal’s online submission system, adding “Dossier Digital Art History” as a keyword.
This dossier is edited by Marilena Daquino (University of Bologna), Carolina Fernández-Castrillo, (Charles III University of Madrid), Diego Mantoan (University of Palermo), and Simone Rebora (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz).