Chairs: Diana Seave Greenwald,National Gallery of Art – d-greenwald@nga.gov and Kim Oosterlinck,Université libre de Bruxelles – koosterl@ulb.ac.be
When studying the art market or provenance, scholars consult numerous data sources: auction catalogues, historic exhibition catalogues, museum inventories, etc. Often, the end-goal of this consultation is to trace a single artwork’s history or track price movements for a given group of works. This session will feature the work of scholars who use these same data sources in order to answer questions beyond determining prices or provenance.
Data culled from the same catalogs and inventories can also be used to examine art historical trends over the long run. For example, can we trace the mix of genres shown in different exhibition venues during the nineteenth century? Is it possible to graph museums’ accession and deaccession patterns or measure the number of women artists or artists of color in public collections? Ultimately, the aim of this session is to demonstrate that the data integral to the study of price patterns or provenance can also provide useful quantitative insights into a wide range of research questions in the history of art.
Field of Study:
Survey
Collecting/Patronage Studies
Digital Humanities
Economics
Art History
Deadline: July 23rd
Authors are welcomed to contact the Chairs should more time be required.