What Would Digital Art History Look Like?

Can the study of art history stop looking like ancient history itself? Can it transcend the old approaches and embrace the digital world? As digitized as art history has become in terms of merely creating online repositories of texts and images, it still lags in going fully digital in terms of using computers to aid in the analysis of art. A recent issue of Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation dedicated to the question of “Digital Art History” gathered experts in the field to weigh in on the potential advantages and disadvantages of studying art digitally. Is this a brave new world that will bring us closer than ever to understanding the great works of art, or will technology actually get in the way and separate us from the human element in the work, effectively erasing the traditional goal of studying art? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "What Would Digital Art History Look Like?"

[Image: Vincent Van Gogh. Starry Night, 1889. Extreme magnification via Google Art Project.]