Venice International University - Visualizing Cities Summer Institute

With the generous support of the Getty Foundation, Duke University’s Digital Art History & Visual Culture Research Lab (DAHVCR Lab), in partnership with colleagues from the Università degli Studi di Padova, the University of Exeter, and Venice International University, will be offering a two-year Advanced Topics in Digital Art History Summer Institute on the topic “Exhibiting Hidden Histories: Bringing Art History Projects to Publics through Digital Exhibitions and XR.” Led by representatives from Duke University and the partner institutions, Interdisciplinary teams consisting of faculty and staff leaders, graduate students, postdocs, and other project collaborators gathered from June 5-16, 2023, in Venice, Italy at Venice International University, with follow-up activities taking place over the course of the 2023-24 academic year, and leading into a follow-on gathering June 3-7, 2024.

After six editions of two-week summer workshops introducing concepts and methods for digital art and architectural history through hands-on tutorials and collaborative project development, this Institute draws upon several years of research-institute development collaboration within the Visualizing Cities consortium, most recently with a Summer Institute in Venice June 2018-19, an international Symposium at Duke University in 2020, followed by a collective gathering at the Università degli Studi di Padova in June 2022.

Faculty

Institute Co-Directors:

• Paul Jaskot, Duke University
• Mark Olson, Duke University
• Victoria Szabo, Duke University

Additional Faculty:

• Andrea Giordano, Università degli Studi di Padova
• Hannah Jacobs, Duke University
• Cosimo Monteleone, Università degli Studi di Padova
• Fabrizio Nevola, University of Exeter
• Luca Pes, Venice International University
• David Rosenthal, University of Exeter
• Ed Triplett, Duke University
• Augustus Wendell, Duke University (Year 2 only)

Course Description and Focus

Questions of how classed, racialized, and gendered individuals and social groups are erased in standard art histories or dealt with as difficult topics have become all the more urgent and central to our scholarly concerns. By engaging with the topic of Exhibiting Hidden Histories, the Institute will take a critical approach to cultural heritage and memory. The Institute leaders will draw upon examples from prior work in the Visualizing Cities Consortium (the Venetian Ghetto, Nazi-occupied Krakow, Black Charlotte, NC communities under urban renewal). In particular, all participants will begin by collaboratively modeling the issues of difficult art histories through the case study of the island of San Servolo itself, whose history encompasses its transition from a convent in early-modern Venice to a mental asylum through the Fascist period. They will be expected to take these lessons learned into developing their own individual team projects. This theme is central to current concerns in shifting art historical questions to a broader and more critical range of historical and cultural subjects.

Participant teams will bring their own examples into the conversation, and we will also discuss other examples from Digital Art History (DAH). As a group, we will consider how to work with, and convey, difficult and hidden histories, and how we might thoughtfully incorporate experiential, affective, and contradictory evidence into geospatial, immersive, and interactive narrative practices (XR) for analytic and interpretive scholarship (including public humanities). We will also consider questions of scalability, sustainability, and community engagement in relation to our digital practices. In keeping with these commitments, we will consider how to bring Digital Art Historical scholarship to public audiences. Part of our discussions in the workshop will focus on the stakes and consequences of defining and engaging one or more “publics” through work in museums, exhibitions, websites, apps, and other materials that are available to a broader public than the scholarly community.