Is public art history possible? What does it look like? How can we convey the political nature of art better to people (anyone)? How do we overcome certain perceptions people have about art history? How do we translate our personal interests and disciplinary ideas and trends for a broader audience? Do we need to do this at all?

These were a few of the challenging questions we discussed today, and ones that are critically important to address. None of them are easy to answer. Some of them make me uncomfortable, if only because they force me to recognize and accept some of my own biases, problems, and issues.

I’ve continued to think about the conversations of today, and imagine I will continue to do so long after #doingdah14 ends. What is public art history? And how can I do it? I am deeply committed to the idea of engaging with relevant publics (thanks, Nancy) outside of academia. I am intrigued by the notion of nerd sourcing/crowd sourcing/community sourcing, even if I am still unnerved by it to some degree. For those of us who like to be in complete control–and let’s face it, that’s most of us art historians–this might be a challenge (the ultimate challenge perhaps?).

This brings me to another point of discussion today: who are the relevant publics of our work? How do we engage them? And if we are not engaging with them, what tools/activities/structures/collaborations/etc. do we need to do so? In my group, an interesting idea was raised by Nancy Micklewright who noted that the Freer and Sackler Galleries have been developing programming around IPOP, or the idea that people fall into 1 of 4 categories of engagement: ideas, peoples (stories), objects, and physical. This resonated with me not only because I found this idea interesting for the museum space(s), but also because I see this as a useful way to think about my project(s) engaging with relevant publics.

Over the past week and a half I’ve circled around these ideas, occasionally attacking them head on. How do I engage with people about the arts of death and dying in Mexico? Why should I create this project? What’s in it for me, but more importantly what’s in it for anyone else? Is the project worthwhile? Where can I improve it? I keep wondering if perhaps it is too narrowly focused. After all, I want to write a book about this material, but that doesn’t mean the digital project has to follow that idea exactly. Perhaps it would be better as a project about the arts of death and dying more broadly. Or about the arts of death and dying between a narrow time span (e.g., 1600-1800).

I’ve also thought a lot (more than I care to admit) about whether I should create a project about the Sacred Heart. As the subject of my forthcoming book, I’m ready move on to another topic. Really ready. However, I think there are still some unanswered questions I have about the material that digital art history can help answer. Moreover, I think some of the tools allow me to make connections I was confident existed, but could never “prove” they did; some tools we’ve learned this week have helped me to do so. Lastly, with the Sacred Heart I can really see the collaborative nature of the project develop in interesting ways. Imagine in an ideal world if other art historians, historians, religious experts, pop culture consumers, and others across the globe all participated in a project on the Sacred Heart as cult, devotion, object, image, and icon. I’m kind of loving the idea, even though I am loathe to admit it.

I’m going to return to this issue of public art history in a future post. I’m looking forward to discussing the issue with colleagues, friends, and family back home.

Source: Day 8: Dirty Laundry and the Potential for Public Art History

I am indebted to Spencer for teaching us his formulas for some of our data. I am not the most skilled person with Excel. For my work on the Sacred Heart, I’ve always wanted to make a chart like the above of the percentages of Sacred Heart texts published in different countries in the eighteenth century.  I probably should have Googled it and learned earlier, but I didn’t and know I’m not sure why.

And look at how beautifully it displays my data (disclaimer: it is not all input; this represents only 71 texts out of hundreds–stay tuned). In a simple, straightforward manner, it conveys that Mexico published many texts on the Sacred Heart between 1700–1850. I was only able to develop such a nice pie chart after inputing my data into a spreadsheet. This also required me to tidy my data; it turns out it was really messy!

Our discussions over the past several days have impressed upon me the necessity of tidy data. While I always organize my research (my data), I realize that this doesn’t necessarily translate to tidiness. Creating a few excel spreadsheets with this in mind, I was able to make the pie chart above as well as input my data into a few other programs that visualized it in different ways. I also input some of it into Timeline JS. Rather than input individual items one-by-one–and with nothing to show but the final product–the detailed, tidy spreadsheets I’ve been working on this week transfer between many programs and platforms. I see this transferability as an essential ingredient for any project, particularly at the early stages of it when you might explore and tinker.

I’m also going to experiment further with Palladio. It offered interesting possibilities for data visualization that could be useful for my project.

Source: Day 7: The Power of Visualization

I had high hopes for the applicability of data mining to my current/future project and my long-term research on the Sacred Heart. I’ll largely discuss my research on the Sacred Heart because I’m familiar with the material, having worked with it/on it for the past decade. I thought it would be useful to have a “safety” to see how well these data mining tools work. Verdict: so far, I’ve not been impressed with Google N-grams or Bookworm or Voyant or Open Calais. I hesitated to write this, if only because I imagine some of my cohort found at least one of these programs useful. Or so I hope. I felt frustrated with Google N-grams and Bookworm in particular. I couldn’t find useful sources that relate to my project, so I decided to try them with material related to the Sacred Heart. The results came back from both, and I noticed how skewed the results were. No texts published in Mexico between 1730-1748? Incorrect. And where were the spikes in the early nineteenth century? My excitement turned to skepticism. What was Google using to gather this data? How was it sorting it? Did accent/diacritic marks make a difference? How can I use data that is skewed, if at all? How do I know when the data isn’t skewed? I felt similarly with Bookworm. These programs definitely seem to have an inherent Anglocentrism, which is not to say that they cannot be improved to correct that in the future. But for now I don’t feel I can use them in any meaningful way.

Voyant similarly saddened me. What high hopes I had for mining my PDFs! Alas, they were dashed. Instead, I inserted by book manuscript on the Sacred Heart. While not relevant to my project, I was delighted to see how the program mined my manuscript and visualized my top words choices. See:

And another graph that Voyant generated for me displays where certain keywords are used most often in specific chapters.

Overall, I left today realizing that text mining still needs development in many areas. I also believe that it is not as relevant to many art historians because text mining doesn’t apply–at least as it was defined to day and I’m using it here–as data mining of say archival documents or images (if that’s even really possible at this time).

A major point I did take home today–thank you Lisa Rhody–is to make sure I have tidy data. After our discussion today of structured vs. unstructured data, I began to think of ways to create tidy data for my current book project on the Sacred Heart. Long ago I created a .doc that contained important events, object production dates, publication date of texts, and more that I arranged chronologically. Today I began placing it in a spreadsheet and making it into tidy data. My goal is to map this data–or at least some of it. While not related to my deathways project, this is immediately relevant to my book manuscript. I might even find that it directly affects some of my ideas.

And just for fun…

My Animoto video (I didn’t post one last week, so I quickly made one for show-and-tell):

It’s nothing fancy, but it gives you an idea of how Animoto looks as well as how it might work for a project.

While Animoto doesn’t appear to have any immediate relevance to my project, I do think it offers students a wonderful way to engage with material.

Source: Day 6: Mining Data

Digital Art History bootcamp ended on a high note (for me) as we delved into mapping and visualizing change over time. Before the institute started, I possessed little knowledge of mapping but knew it would be useful for my project. For example, I want to be able to show the areas affected by epidemics in sixteenth-century Mexico alongside those locations that display artworks related to death and dying. I assumed that mapping would be complicated and messy, but after Friday I learned that there are plenty of tools that are easy to use.

The Google Map Engine proved straightforward and user-friendly. I didn’t have an excel file with data for my project, so I decided to turn to the only reasonable alternative: mapping hipsters in a small part of DC (see the above embedded Google Map). While mapping hipsters doesn’t relate to my project, the data did allow me to experiment with mapping.

I was so excited by new-found ability to create easy, readable maps that I called my husband during the lunch break to walk him through the process. I thought it would be useful for him as he thinks about opening a new practice. He plans to plot potential “rivals,” transportation stations, and rent-able locations for instance.

I wasn’t sure that anything could top my excitement, but then we moved on to the New York Public Library’s Map Warper and StoryMap. I was in awe of the Map Warper. I found an eighteenth-century map of Mexico, which I georectified. This is an incredibly powerful tool made available to everyone by the NYPL. For example, the map I used allowed me to pin cities in New Spain (colonial Mexico) and a modern map of Mexico. Cities that had different names are now coordinated with their modern equivalent. The historical map “cloaks” the current one. For me this was one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate how maps lie and manipulate space. While the Map Warper wasn’t as immediately relevant to my project, it certainly does provide me with historical maps to orient people in the viceroyalty of New Spain.

StoryMap amazed me with its creative capabilities. I decided to create a story map of the spread of hipsters in Brooklyn (of course!). I’m not sure yet how I would incorporate it into my project on Mexican deathways, and I don’t know that I will. I abide by the notion that the tools and technology shouldn’t dictate the project. However, I know I will use it in my courses. It was easy and fun to use. Plus, I think it offers wonderful possibilities of engaging students with certain types of materials.

To sum up, I see great potential in using some of these mapping tools for my project. The Google Map Engine in particular will become a crucial component of visualizing some of my data. I dreaded what I thought would be a complicated and time-consuming process, but in reality it will develop much faster–the click of a few buttons really.

Source: Day 5: Geospatial Art History & the Art of Mapping Hipsterdom