Digital Art History for the Masses? The Role of the Public Digital Art History Lab

Digital Art History (DAH), which embraces massive datasets, innovative methodologies based on computational techniques, and collaborative paradigms, promises to offer new perspectives on the history of art. For example, DAH has the potential to shift the discipline’s focus from the traditional topics of inquiry to less explored aspects of the field—in short, to reposition the discipline’s central preoccupations with the issues of patronage, which are the concerns of the elite, to broader structures at work in a society, including the experiences of the marginalized. This displacement from center to periphery is not restricted to DAH research questions, but often applies to other aspects of DAH as well: to its status within the Digital Humanities (DH); to the demographic it frequently attracts; and to the infrastructure(s) developed to support it. Yet despite this potential, in many respects DAH occupies the periphery. This essay problematizes these issues as crystallized by the establishment of a digital art history lab at a privately funded library that serves the public, and explores one instance of how DAH has forced the North American academy to reflect further on the issues of privilege, access, and the future of art history.