Data Ecosystems and Futures of Art History

This debate articulates a series of practices with respect to research data and art history. It adopts a broad framework for the discipline, situating it not just in academia but also museums, libraries, and archives, which form our data ecosystem. This perspective leads the contributors to consi-der research data as distinguishable from, while nonetheless closely related to, collections data. The debate then lays out how this distinction informs and arguably entails differing responsibilities with respect to such practices as data interoperability and reusability, data enrichment, and interpretation as well as the application of computer vision and machine learning. A key takeaway from this debate is that such practices are not inviolable but instead contingent and should be considered critically. Thus, it is imperative that art history curricula take up developing competencies related to research data; this is our shared future.