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COVID, CO2, and the future of the Digital Humanities 2022
Full text linkThe coincidence, in the years 2020–2022, of COVID and increasing worldwide concern about carbon footprints, would appear to culminate in an obvious direction for the future of the DH: the necessity to push forward with mass digitisation so that scholars do not need to fly around the world to study unique objects such as manuscripts, and the move to exclusively digital publishing in order to avoid generating carbon footprints for books and journals which, now in 2022, appear to be entirely unnecessary to publish in print and more akin to driving around in a 1950s Cadillac. The proposition to stop most or all print publishing in academia may have been unthinkable even a decade ago, but in the current situation, and the forseeable future, it would be the most effective way for scholarship and scholars to make their contribution to de-carbonisation
The Print in the Codex: Guest edited by Jeanne-Marie Musto: Introduction
Full text linkSarah Schaefer’s study of nineteenth-century Bibles is the first of two papers from a session held at the 2021 College Art Association Annual Conference that will appear in this journal. Entitled ‘The Print in the Codex’ and sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America, the session considered books transformed through the incorporation of independently printed images. In tracing the transformation of extra-illustration into standardized illustration, Schaefer provides significant insights for both book and print history. In the next issue of this journal, a paper by Sylvia Massa will consider codices created to house single-sheet prints. The integration of these codices into public collections has frequently meant removing the prints from the bindings altogether and, thereby, removing their historical context. Focusing on developments at the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, her paper sheds light on an overlooked aspect of book and print history of importance to both curators and print historians
A man of many gifts and the anti-materialistic struggle in the arts: Ferdinand Feldegg’s monographs on Friedrich Ohmann and Leopold Bauer
Full text linkThe paper deals with two monographs of contemporary architects, published in Vienna in 1906-1918 by Ferdinand von Feldegg. The founder and long-time editor of the magazine Der Architekt was one of the central figures of the Central European architectural scene around 1900. As the main author of a book about Theophil Hansen from 1893, he became the founder and for a long time the most important representative of the genre of architectural biography in Austria. However, the monographs on Ohmann and Bauer are not part of historical discourse, but arose in the process of formulating the principles of modern architecture and were supposed to prove the historical legitimacy of its more conformist faction. Feldegg presents Ohmann and Bauer as the creator of the synthesis of historicism and modernity as the postulated architecture of the future. At the same time, they appear in the monographs as an antitype of Otto Wagner, whom Feldegg criticized for extreme anti-artistic rationalism. The paper shows the narrative strategies of Feldegg’s monographs and reconstructs the historical and cultural context of both works
Interfaces of art: Meyer Schapiro, Fernand Léger, and the role of the art historian in anachronistic artistic influence
Full text linkIn the 1930s Meyer Schapiro introduced the modern painter Fernand Léger to a tenth-century Beatus manuscript (M.644) in the collection of the Morgan Library. This encounter inspired formal changes in Léger’s work during the 1940s, as evidenced by his series of paintings titled Divers and Acrobats. While this anecdote has been regularly related in the scholarship on both the Morgan Beatus and Léger’s work, it has never been seriously analyzed. This article looks at this episode in depth and argues that, by treating the mutual influence between the manuscript and Léger’s work as an essential part of the life of each of these artworks, we reassert the importance of art historians in mediating and influencing the course of contemporary art in their own time
”Neo-Medievalism Studies”, Italy, and the Four Ghosts: architectural history and the study of medievalism
Full text linkThis historiographical piece has two main objectives. On the one hand, it sets out to offer the first sustained discussion of the study of – and the tendency to ignore, underestimate, and criticise – Italian neo-medieval architecture. On the other, by focusing on the Italian case, it reflects on the interplay of architectural history and medievalism studies, making the special claim that, if medievalism and medievalism studies can be defined as the responses to the Middle Ages and the study of those responses, respectively, then ‘neo-medievalism’ and ‘neo-medievalism studies’ shall describe the architectural and artistic manifestations of medievalism and their study. Using the analogy of the ‘Ghost of the Present’, the ‘Ghost of the Future’, and the two ‘Ghosts of the Past’, the article opens by discussing the reasons for the neglect and marginalisation of, and bias towards, Italian neo-medieval architecture. After reconstructing a critical history of the key episodes in scholarship that has touched upon Italian neo-medieval architecture, it proposes an analysis of the notion of – and an apologia for the study of – neo-medievalism beyond the boundaries of space, style, and time
Environmental and Health Impacts of E-cycling - Policy Briefing Note produced by the TRANSITION Clean Air Network
Full text linkElectrically assisted bicycles (e-bikes) can have an important role in enabling UK transport to achieve net zero, improve air quality, increase levels of physical activity and improve mental and physical health. This briefing note examines the current evidence on the environmental and health impacts of e-cycling, highlighting why the promotion of e-cycling should be a key component to address UK health, climate and clean air challenges.
The TRANSITION Clean Air Network is a UK-wide network, led by the University of Birmingham in collaboration with nine universities and over 20 cross-sector partners, aiming to optimise the air quality and health outcomes of transport decarbonisation; it is funded by UKRI via the UK Clean Air Strategic Priorities Fund, administered by NERC [NE/V002449/1]
Introduction to The Print in the Codex, Part 2 of a series
Full text linkThe following paper by Silvia Massa was first presented at a session sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America that I chaired on 10 February 2021 at the 109th College Art Association Annual Conference. Entitled ‘The Print in the Codex’, the session considered books transformed through the incorporation of independently printed images. This is the second of two papers from the session to appear in this journal; Sarah Schaefer’s study of the impact of extra-illustration on printing history, ‘Bibles Unbound: The Material Semantics of Nineteenth-Century Scriptural Illustration’, appeared in the June 2022 issue
Hans Sedlmayr, ‘Obituary: Julius Ritter von Schlosser 23 IX 1866 – 1 XII 1938’, trans. Karl Johns (Independent)
Full text linkThe greatest respect one could show would certainly be a renewed and serious consideration of Schlosser’s work – and yet we have another duty which strikes me as more important still, and this is to recognize its significance for the history of art beyond the mere accrual of knowledge. For us art historians, this question is inextricably bound to the other as to whether we have done justice to his work, and as paradoxical as it might sound about such a figure who was given the highest possible honors during his life, I would have to answer in the negative. … I would most like to show that the large and impressive work of Julius von Schlosser is today in no way finished, and that the day it was published is fading behind us, but indeed that Schlosser still has a very living contribution to make to the history of art of our own time, and that it is far from fading. This is very clear as we consider his work in relation to his own time
The miniatures of the antiphonaries of the Diocesan Library of Chioggia: a digital life
Full text linkThe research project presented here is the creation of a digital life for the art- historical information that emerged from research into the miniatures of the antiphonaries of the Diocesan Library of Chioggia. The result is a small digital space where one can visualize textual and multimedia content concerning the illuminated capilettera found inside three antiphonaries of the Diocesan Library of Chioggia (Venezia), in manuscripts 4523, 4527 and 4528 respectively. An intuitive web platform allows the user to navigate between various general sections and two catalogues through the use of search filters set to refine the selection of items within them
Women in museums: An interdisciplinary approach to the history of the first female administrators in European cultural institutions
Full text linkThe European Commission is currently making efforts to address the persistent gender inequality in the decision-making roles of museums and cultural heritage institutions. This research project – presented in June 2022 at the Summer School in Digital Humanities organised by the Department of Human Sciences at the Universita degli Studi dell’Aquila – explores the extent to which this ‘glass ceiling’ in the sector may be linked with the historical, twentieth-century gender-biased development of the curatorial profession. The project’s research methodology combines archival research and digital humanities with semi-structured interviews and statistical analysis, in order to uncover the circumstances in which women started accessing the curatorial profession in Europe, and to unearth the significance of twentieth-century female curatorial work
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