Exploring the digital museum: what does art scholarship look like in an online space?
Whilst scholarly publishing generally favours the digital, the field of art publishing is proving slow to catch up. There are notable limitations with the migration of art scholarship to digital models (including open access), and yet this discipline presents some of the most intriguing possibilities when considering digital formats. Can we reconcile the opportunities with the limitations, or should art scholarship remain as a museum artefact in the physical world?
Scholarship on art presents a challenge as it mostly exists as monographs — a format often left behind as academic journals move forward with online articles. In 2016, Crossick presented a case for monographs to be considered as the scholarly community migrates to digital OA, and their importance within the larger scholarly framework. Despite arguably working best in print due to issues with licensing, as well as relying heavily on images, art publishing in its current iteration presents problems concerning accessibility - art monographs can be incredibly costly and often come in large folio formats.
With this considered there is certainly an argument for a move towards OA, but proponents of this must contend with the gatekeepers of visual culture as well as the gatekeepers of traditional publishing — indeed, copyright becomes an extremely complicated issue when involving third parties such as museums and curators. OA art history journals do exist, but these are limited. The last few years have seen a renewed call for help with image licensing costs in art and humanities publishing, but copyright is still a ‘thorny’ issue (Angelaki, 2019).
A shift to open access in art publishing would not only improve accessibility, but the corresponding move to digital-first could enhance the contribution of such publications to the scholarly community. The same is true for monographs in general (Crossick, 2016). Crossick stresses the importance of identifying ‘the ways in which moves to open access might improve on the features, form and function of monographs.’ Whilst perhaps unfeasible in an entirely OA model, it is worth considering what art scholarship in digital formats could offer in terms of innovation. For example, a webpage has the capacity to include images, audio, video, the sense of sifting through a curated collection as well as being citational to other works (and providing direct links to such works). In order to motivate a democratic shift online, the digital versions of art monographs must present an alternative to the print book that enhances user experience in a way that an eBook does not.
Potential user demands are reflected in the popularity of virtual gallery tours — despite being a ‘forced trend’ of 2020 due to inability to visit in-person, the increasing availability of Google-Maps-style tours offer a new way of experiencing galleries online. When combined with the academic rigour offered by published arts monographs, an embrace of the multimedia in this sense could be an asset to the scholarly community.
The closest thing we have to this idea exists in radical OA; for example, publisher electric.press create multimedia scholarly projects online which highlight the potential future for art publications in the digital world. In ‘The Middle Shore’, the viewer acts as beachcomber, moving between images, essay excerpts and longer-form scholarship; as if replicating the experience of moving through a museum or archive in an online space. Using this as a model, we may find a way forward not only for promoting the accessibility of visual culture but keeping scholarly projects in art history fresh and generating interest. Whilst undoubtedly there are licensing pitfalls, perhaps the art and humanities academic community should be considering how technology can offer scholars a new way into visual culture.
Bibliography
Anderson-Wilk, M. and Hino, J (2011), “Achieving rigour and relevance in online multimedia scholarly publishing”, First Monday. Available at: https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3762/3119 (Accessed 13.02.2021)
Angelaki, M (2019). “Image Copyright and Open Access in the Arts and Humanities”, Unlocking Research, University of Cambridge*.* Available at: https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2664 (Accessed 13.02.2021)
British Art Studies (2021). Available at: https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/ (Accessed 13.02.2021)
Crossick, G (2016). “Monographs and Open Access”. Insights 29 (1): 14–19. DOI. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.280 (Accessed 12.02.2021)
Farina, L. and Richards, K. eds. (2018) The Middle Shore. Raleigh, NC: Hyperrhiz Electric. Available at: http://electric.press/books/middleshore.html (Accessed 12.02.2021)
Landry, C (2016). “The Monograph Crisis: Open Access for Art and Design Scholarship”, Open Book Publishers. Available at: https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/the-monograph-crisis-open-access-for-art-and-design-scholarship/ (Accessed 11.02.2021)
Yale University Press (2021), Art and Architecure. Available at: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/disciplines/art-and-architecture (Access 12.02.2021)
