Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank’s article “Doing Digital Art History in a Pre-Columbian Art Survey Class: Creating an Omeka Exhibition Around the Mixtec Codex Zouche-Nuttall” unites the themes that we have been discussing as a class since the beginning of the semester.[1] Within her experimental integration of digital art history into a Pre-Columbian art survey class, Kilroy-Ewbank notes the challenges, successes, and potential for using a digitally centered project as a part of her pedagogical methodology. We can see the product of educating students in building digital repositories through interfaces like The William Blake Archive. Introducing digital tools to practice digital art history earlier in art history students’ educations will facilitate new and innovative projects.
The objective of Kilroy-Ewbank’s project for her students was to create an interactive digital exhibition investigating various characteristics of the Pre-Columbian Mixtec Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Kilroy-Ewbank explained that students often had trouble understanding the pictorial nature of written Mixtec communication. She saw the creation of this interactive exhibition as a method for students to meaningfully interact with the piece in order to achieve greater comprehension of the work as well as Mixtec art and communication more broadly. By dividing students into teams to learn how to create their exhibit from a new digital tool, Omeka, she made collaboration necessary to the classroom rather than the more traditional research paper completed individually.
Alison Langmeade also wrote about how digital art history encourages collaboration in her example of the University of Pittsburgh’s Visual Media Workshop (VMW).[2] Through this organization of students, Langmeade explained how the VMW allowed students to collaborate on projects together rather than conduct research in isolation. Kilroy-Ewbank’s Omeka project for her students functions in the same way. She notes that even outside the project, she encouraged collaborative research and study made possible by Google Apps suitable for sharing notes with whole classes. She also acknowledges, like Langmead and Paul Jaskot, that digital analysis is useful for macroanalysis and for finding spatial and temporal patterns in works but that it is the human’s responsibility to explain the pattern.[3] The pictorial nature of the Codex Zouche-Nuttall also lends itself to be analyzed and explained well through a digital project.
Without knowing a lot about the Codex Zouche-Nuttall itself, its overwhelming amount of images remind me of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Last week, I also mentioned Bosch’s work and the Netherlands’ subsequent digital humanity project that creates an audio-visual experience where the user can zoom in and click on details for further information.[4] I can imagine students creating a similar digital project for the Codex Zouche-Nuttall. Kilroy-Ewbank notes how students were responsible for collecting comparative images and the potential to integrate geographical or topographical data into their exhibitions. The practice of creating, arranging, and constructing a digital exhibition not only allowed students to create a unique research project to learn more about a piece of Mesoamerican history, but it also introduced undergraduate students to digital tools to disseminate scholarship in an age inundated with digital images.
One challenge that Kilroy-Ewbanks noted was students’ frustrations with using Omeka, a completely new tool for them, and the ensuing awkwardness or inconsistencies that manifested in the resulting exhibition. I am experiencing similar frustration technological frustration while using the digital repository-building tool, Collection Builder through GitHub. During my undergraduate studies, I had taken classes that did involve aspects of digital humanities and digital art history, but I mostly participated in the research and scholarship rather than the digital construction.
While studying abroad in Rome, Italy, I worked with fellow students in a Museum Studies class to create a digital exhibition of fake art confiscated by the Carabinieri de Tutelo di Patrimonio (the site is still active if you would like to check it out! Deception by Design: Lessons from Forgeries). A graduate student constructed the digital exhibition, while the undergraduate students researched and wrote about the objects. In her class, Kilroy-Ewbanks required the students to also be involved in the maintenance of metadata and construction of the digital exhibition.
The creation of digital exhibitions and repositories like The William Blake Archive are helpful for sharing scholarship with a greater public and for creating new scholarship. Kilroy-Ewbanks notes in the conclusion of her article that some of her goals for the Codex Zouche-Nuttall project included having her students learn the importance of sharing scholarship and the fact that history is created through thoughtful research and synthesis. The William Blake Archive is an early example of a digital project aimed at increasing access and generating scholarship related to the art and writing of William Blake. Starting in 1995, The William Blake Archive unites the works of Blake across several repositories and features rotating digital exhibits that highlight different aspects of Blake’s lifetime as an artist, like an exhibition dedicated to his work in Sussex for William Hayley or his drawings of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The William Blake Archive is a great example of the past of digital projects, but it also inspires the future for even better digital repositories.
The William Blake Archive is not without its faults. Likely because of its long life, issues of maintenance and uniformity inevitably become issues as contributors and editors come and go. I think that as more scholars experiment with creating digital tools, upkeep and maintenance will prove to be an important factor to consider as the life of the project persists.
Integrating digital art history methods into undergraduate art history curriculum, like Kilroy-Ewbanks’ assigned project, allows art history to adapt to the digital world. As scholarship is almost entirely shared and produced online, it is important for students of art history to learn about helpful digital tools for their own research interests—technological frustration and all.
[1] Lauren G. Kilroy-Ewbank, “Doing Digital Art History in a Pre-Columbian Art Survey Class: Creating an Omeka Exhibition around the Mixtec Codex Zouche-Nuttall,” Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, no. 12 (February 2018).
[2] Alison Langmead, “Art and Architectural History and the Performative, Mindful Practice of the Digital Humanities,” Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, no. 12 (February 2018).
[3] Paul B. Jaskot, “Digital Art History as the Social History of Art: Towards the Disciplinary Relevance of Digital Methods,” Visual Resources 35:1-2 (2019), 26.
[4] Pieter van Huystee Film, NTR, Jheronimus Bosch, the Garden of Earthly Delights (Pieter van Huystee Film, NTR, 2016), https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html#.
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