TIAMSA News – CFP: Critical Data in Art Market Research (TIAMSA Session 2 at CAA Chicago, 16-19 Feb 2022)

In recent years, the study of the art market has seen significant progress due to the increasing availability of digitized source materials, such as dealer archives and stock books, auction catalogs or exhibition databases. Similarly, a growing number of museums – under pressure to become more transparent, democratic and socially responsible – have begun to research provenances and to publish the relevant data on their websites. At the same time, however, the process of making these digitized sources and the newly available data productive for use by the scholarly community and the interested public at large has lagged behind.

This panel brings together examples of data driven methodologies in the study of the art market, showcasing their potential for both the study of the art market proper, but also their relevance for the larger field of art historical research. We are interested in short presentations that address, amongst others, technical questions of data aggregation and compilation, standards, data analysis, and data visualization – ideally through a critical lens, thus highlighting and counter-acting historiographical biases (e.g., gender, sexuality, geography, age, etc.), especially their problematic reproduction through existing data-driven methodologies. We invite contributions addressing any geographies and time periods. Team-based and/or co-authored papers are welcome.

This one-hour panel, which aims to foster dialogue and discussion, will be held as TIAMSA’s CAA business meeting, hence you will not require CAA membership / conference registration to present at or follow this panel. We strive to make the panel as open access as possible, with the possibility of live-streaming or pre-record content. Unfortunately, TIAMSA will not be able to provide travel support.

If you would like to propose a 10-15 minute presentation, please submit an abstract (max. 250 words), a CV (1-2 pages), as well as a statement on why your proposal is a good fit for this panel (max. 100 words). You are also welcome to include images, though be mindful to submit them in an easily accessible format. Early submissions are highly encouraged. Please send your submission to max.koss@leuphana.de by September 16, 2021.

Convenor: Dr Max Koss, Provenance Studies Lab, Department of Philosophy and Sciences of Art, Leuphana University Lüneburg (Germany)