University of St Andrews Launches Online Digital Art History Programme
By Nicole Entin
When most people think of art history, the mental image of this discipline is often framed by associations with the operative word ‘history’: long hallways of picture galleries, gilded frames, mahogany furnishings, manuscripts worn by time, documents written in cramped black-ink cursive. Yet this picture of art history – the kind of aestheticized portrayal found in Hollywood films from ‘The Da Vinci Code’ to ‘Mona Lisa Smile’ – is one that neither accounts for the diversity of the discipline, nor the way in which it has been adapting to contemporary perspectives, settings, and even technologies. This coming academic year, the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews is looking to this latter aspect as it launches its first-ever online postgraduate course, Digital Art History. Combining teaching from the schools of Art History and Computer Science, the programme will consider new perspectives on art historical research, incorporating methodologies such as data visualisation or 3D modelling in tandem with the discipline’s traditional approaches. The programme will also discuss trending topics including NFTs and the increasing use of blockchain technologies in the art industry, the ethics of AI-generated art, and new methods of digital exhibitions. This postgraduate course is the first of its kind in the UK, placing an emphasis on both theoretical and practical skills that will give its graduates a head start in entering the rapidly developing art world.
Thomson Reading Room, Martyrs Kirk Research Library, University of St Andrews. © The University of St Andrews. CC BY-NC Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Public License.
Dr Emily Savage, Dr Billy Rough, and Dr Natalia Sassu Suarez Ferri are the three lecturers at the helm of this exciting new programme at St Andrews, which develops one of the goals of the School of Art History’s 2021-2026 Strategic Plan – to ‘explore the potential of digital skills and distance learning while sustaining our ethos of small-group, research-led teaching.’ Reflecting on how Digital Art History came to fruition, Dr Savage explained that she had initially discussed the possibility of such a programme with Professor Laura Moretti, the current Head of School. She emphasised their shared desire to develop a programme that not only ‘focused on teaching and critically examining the use of digital tools and methods in Art Historical research’, but also furthered the five-year Strategic Plan by incorporating digitisation and accessibility into the school curriculum.
The Digital Art History programme will be available in three forms: as a full MLitt qualification which includes the completion of a final dissertation or final project, a one to two-year Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip), or as a one-year Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert). Those working towards the PGCert will take three modules in Art History and one module in Computer Science, while PGDip and MLitt students will take five Art History modules and three Computer Science modules. The modules on offer present an exciting array of methodological and practical learning options. Dr Savage will be teaching the module on Digital Tools, which will examine how technologies within the realms of data visualisation, network analysis, and machine learning – among others – can contribute to new strategies of art historical research, while Dr Sassu Suarez Ferri will be leading the Digital Art module, which will focus on the implementation of digital technologies into the practices of artists and museum professionals. Meanwhile, to supplement the concepts presented in the Art History modules, the School of Computer Science will be offering modules such as Programming in Python and Machine Learning Algorithms.
Gabriel Massan, Third World: The Bottom Dimension, 2022 [Video Game]. Featuring Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar & LYZZA. Image courtesy Gabriel Massan.
The notion of a digital art history might seem unexpected at the outset, but it falls within the purview of a field that is collectively referred to as the ‘digital humanities’, which has long been incorporating the use of digital tools into research methodologies – since the mid-twentieth century, in fact. Data mining has enabled research in the humanities to expand to unprecedented scales, textual analysis programmes can be used to identify keywords and vocabularies across written works, and digitisation projects allow greater accessibility to archival and museum collections across the world. Digitisation in the realms of art history and the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) sector proliferated since 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Google Arts and Culture creating an extensive database of virtual museum tours, and most major museums and art galleries across the globe creating digital exhibitions while they were closed to the public during lockdown. For instance, in August of 2020, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York celebrated its 150th anniversary with an exhibition entitled Making the Met, supplementing its limited entry during the pandemic with an online primer of the show and a video tour narrated by the American actor and comedian Steve Martin. In another instance, when forced to shut down their landmark exhibition Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution due to lockdown, the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent created a virtual 360º experience and video tour to compensate for the early closure.
The Google Arts & Culture Museum Views project. https://g.co/arts/iow3hiBg2hTQyiFY7.
Yet even though museums have since reopened, in-person exhibitions continue to be supplemented with virtual components to encourage accessibility for people who experience geographical or economic barriers to visit cultural heritage institutions across the world. High-profile museums such as the Musei Vaticani and the Louvre continue to have digital resources available to view their exhibition spaces from the comfort of one’s own laptop or portable device. Furthermore, integrating 3D modelling software into methodologies of art historical research presents opportunities to visualise lost or destroyed works of art and architecture. For instance, users of the 3D modelling platform website Sketchfab have used the software to recreate the ancient city of Palmyra in modern-day Syria, largely destroyed in 2015 during the country’s civil war. Partnering with digital developers – or even learning to use these technologies themselves – presents new directions for art historians seeking to promote accessibility in this field of study.
When asked what aspect of the Digital Art History programme she was most looking forward to exploring with future students, Dr Savage answered that she was excited about bringing the complex issues at the heart of the programme closer to home within the St Andrews community:
“I’m excited to explore the data from the University’s own collections. We’re working on a few activities to teach students how to perform network analysis using provenance data. Visualising that data can potentially tell us a lot about the movement of art and material culture over time, the web of social and professional networks linking donors and collectors, and the ‘lives’ of objects in our collections. It could also raise more questions than answers, singling out areas for future research where provenance is murky.”
Within the School of Art History at St Andrews, digital methods and learning strategies have already begun to be incorporated into teaching. Both students and lecturers use the digitised collections of museums and galleries for the development of their projects, while in certain modules, virtual exhibition assignments see students learning to use web-based VR software programmes such as Artsteps. Having researchers who are versed in digital technologies presents a myriad of possibilities for developing accessibility, inclusivity, and the sharing of knowledge within art history. It only remains for programmes such as the University of St Andrews Digital Art History degree to instil those skills into the next generation of art historians.
[This article has been partially adapted from a blog post by the author on the University of St Andrews School of Art History website]