Critical Digital Art History

Digital Art History has often aligned itself with thepractical concerns of digital technology and theresponsibilities of art institutions and associatedinstitutional roles such as collection managers,information specialists, curators, and conservators.This emphasis on practicalities andimplementation, while undeniably important, hasoften meant that there is little room for criticalexamination of the broader implications of digitaltechnology and computational methodologies in arthistory. This anthology seeks to address the dearthof critical reflection by approaching the use ofdigital technology in art history from a theoreticalperspective and critically assessing specific casestudy examples. This book also considers thepolitical dimensions associated with the large-scale digitization and the application of digital toolswithin museums and collection management. A long-standing concern of the field-andalso a major focal point of this book-is museumand collecting practices in the digital era. Whilethere is a certain degree of continuity in the field,there are some important shifts and changes too.One of the key changes is the widespread uptakeof artificial intelligence tools and an increasedattention to both the broader historical and societalaspects of the use of digitaltools within museums and collection management.