{"title":"Curating Online Collections: Towards an Authentically Digital, Mediation Protocol for Art Digitizations","authors":"S. Bertrand","doi":"10.1386/jcs_00054_1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Since the mid-1990s, cultural organizations have increasingly digitized their physical collections and made them available online; however, museums are still puzzled over what to do with these growing digital collections. Meanwhile, art institutions’ reluctance to produce virtual\n exhibitions, linked to a prevailing skeuomorphic paradigm, has left the matter of curating art digitizations unresolved. While museum computing scholarship has aptly identified the problematic absence of authentically digital curatorial processes, it has largely overlooked the fact that online\n collections and in-gallery group shows similarly condition artistic reception owing to a shared database logic, subjecting both to a mediation paradox in contemporary culture. This article examines the effects of this shared logic on public engagement, along with recent digital curatorial\n strategies that have emerged in response around notions of the digital aura and networked objects. The article concludes by proposing three conditions for an alternative curatorial process capable of adequately mediating art digitizations online without sacrificing aesthetic experience to\n the limited affordances of screen-based information and communications technologies.","PeriodicalId":41456,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Curatorial Studies","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Curatorial Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jcs_00054_1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Since the mid-1990s, cultural organizations have increasingly digitized their physical collections and made them available online; however, museums are still puzzled over what to do with these growing digital collections. Meanwhile, art institutions’ reluctance to produce virtual
exhibitions, linked to a prevailing skeuomorphic paradigm, has left the matter of curating art digitizations unresolved. While museum computing scholarship has aptly identified the problematic absence of authentically digital curatorial processes, it has largely overlooked the fact that online
collections and in-gallery group shows similarly condition artistic reception owing to a shared database logic, subjecting both to a mediation paradox in contemporary culture. This article examines the effects of this shared logic on public engagement, along with recent digital curatorial
strategies that have emerged in response around notions of the digital aura and networked objects. The article concludes by proposing three conditions for an alternative curatorial process capable of adequately mediating art digitizations online without sacrificing aesthetic experience to
the limited affordances of screen-based information and communications technologies.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Curatorial Studies is an international, peer-reviewed publication that explores the cultural functioning of curating and its relation to exhibitions, institutions, audiences, aesthetics and display culture. The journal takes a wide perspective in the inquiry into what constitutes ''the curatorial''. Curating has evolved considerably from the connoisseurship model of arranging objects to now encompass performative, virtual and interventionist strategies. While curating as a spatialized discourse of art objects remains important, the expanded cultural practice of curating not only produces exhibitions for audiences to view, but also plays a catalytic role in redefining aesthetic experience, framing cultural conditions in institutions and communities, and inquiring into constructions of knowledge and ideology. As a critical and responsive forum for debate in the emerging field of curatorial studies, the journal will foster scholarship in the theory, practice and history of curating, as well as that of exhibitions and display culture in general. The journal supports in-depth investigations of contemporary and historical exhibitions, case studies of curators and their engagements, and analyses of the critical dynamics influencing the production of exhibitions in art and broader display culture. The Journal of Curatorial Studies invites contributions from scholars within curatorial studies, art history, museum studies, cultural studies, and other academic disciplines. The journal publishes both thematic and open issues, and features research articles, contemporary and historical case studies, interviews with curators, artists and theorists, and reviews of books, exhibitions and conferences.