Art History in Digital Dimensions: A Report on the Proceedings of the Symposium Held in October 2016 at The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. and the University of Maryland, College Park

Abstract

The symposium “Art History in Digital Dimensions” held at The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C. and the University of Maryland, College Park in October 2016 brought together an international, multigenerational group of forty‐five academics, museum and cultural heritage professionals, information scientists, publishers, conservators, and program and grant officers to discuss the current state of digital art history and develop a roadmap for the future practice of the field. The three‐day event, organized by the Department of Art History and Archaeology and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland and sponsored by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Getty Foundation, comprised an interactive agenda featuring roundtables and breakout working groups that addressed core and concerns posed by the incorporation of computational tools and analytical techniques into the study of art history. This format encouraged participants to articulate the challenges and benefits that digitally‐inflected, data‐driven practices offered their own research, teaching, conservation work, and publications and determine strategies to address these opportunities effectively.