Digital Atlas of Art History – ARTLAS

Artl@s provides contributors with a performant digital environment:
• a Post-GIS database of 19th- and 20th c. exhibition catalogues, BasArt, where they can store and share their data with other scholars;
• a working space, the Artl@s Worksite, where they can query BasArt and automatically generate maps and graphs;
• a public interface, the Artl@s Website, where the public at large can browse data and generate maps;
• a scholarly journal, the Artl@s Bulletin devoted to the promotion of a Total (Transnational, social, quantitative, and digital) Art History.

ARTL@S is currently in full development, with
- an established visibility for an international academic community. The ARTL@S project has been identified for its following expertise:
o historical mapping of the arts and digital spacialization
o quantitative art history
o Global art history, study of artistic circulations, issue of the peripheries and spatial hiearchies, geopolitics of the arts
o Database of exhibition catalogues
o publications and reflexions on the challenge of global art history and historical mapping
- the transition to a test-phase of the georeferenced Database BASART, and its connection to a geographical information system
- The extension of its geographical scope, from North-Atlantic and European countries, to Latin America and Africa (with the hire of 2 one-year postdocs, specialists of these regions in the 20th c.)

In the last 20 months, new collaborations have been consolidated:
- collaboration of Purdue University for the realization of a mapping interface
- After the international conference « Global art history and the peripheries » (ENS, June 2013), new contributors have joined the project, coming from Poland, Czech republic, Portugal. They propose to contribute to the extension of Basart, adding new exhibition catalogues coming from the pre-quoted geographical aereas.
ARTL@S’s implications will be reinforced in the following directions :
- Scientific publications (ARTL@S Bulletin, multilingual, free, digital, and internationally referenced peer-review)
- Free and general access to Basart for scholars, Public access to Basart (limited part of the database), and subscription for expert-queries made by market-actors
- Online-display of digital tools and geographical methogological e-learning for scholars
- extension of the database
- the opening of a new branch among our research axes, that will be focused on the national and transnational heritage and patrimonial circulations.

ARTL@S’s funds have also been extended with
- an important contribution of the LabEx TransferS and the Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine
- a grant application from Purdue University
- We will have to search for supplementary funds to extend and feed the database

The regular publication of the ARTL@S-Bulletin makes the research of the ARTL@S team internationally visible. It also provides non-members, a scholarly platform where they can publish their research on global art history, artistic geography, and social and quantitative art history.

After a first phase of informal encounters, and following the regular ARTL@S seminars, the international ARTL@S conferences have been a real success: September 2012 (Purdue University, with international call for papers) and June 2013 (with international invitations). They have produced a space for lively discussion among scholars, while also enlarging the community of researchers interested in spatial-transnational art history.

These conferences have led to new international publications, in particular a collective book on circulations, coedited by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, Catherine Dossin (Purdue University), and Thomas Da Costa Kaufmann (Princeton). The book is written by distinguished and emerging scholars coming from different countries, disciplines, and institutions (French: EHESS, CNRS, Paris 1 et Nanterre and international: universities of Heidelberg/India, Poznan, George Mason, Colgate, Princeton, and the Chicago Art Institute. Both Ashgate Publishing and Penn State University Press are interested in the manuscript; either of them will give the book an immediate international reach.

The ARTL@S members also publish individually, at an international and national level.

We are requesting financial support for the building and launching of a digital atlas of Art History based on the GIS technology (Geographic Information Systems). This project is the result of several years of research on the issues of artistic internationalization and cartographic
representation. The atlas will present the impact of spatial and cartographic logics on the history of the arts
- the arts encompassing here fine arts (painting, sculpture, prints), architecture, decorative arts, cinema and
music. ARTLAS will contribute toward the constitution of a global art history.

In the first two years, the project will focus on the 19th and 20th century. In the next two years, the atlas
will expand chronologically to the modern and medieval periods. Ultimately, the project will sustain itself,
through the contributions of research groups wishing to use art historical maps, and a return of investment
that will allow the creation of animated maps for diverse cultural players such as museums, galleries, territorial
collectivities, etc.

The funding request concerns:
1. the technical and scientific finalization of the atlas, using geoinformatic technologies, i.e. Geographic
Information Systems (GIS);
2. the scientific promotion of the atlas through the organization of a colloquium and the publication of a
book;
3. the building of a website and the publication of a book featuring a selection of maps from the digital atlas.

This project has been carried on since 2009 by a pluridisciplinary team of young scholars, who come mostly
from art history but also from sociology, economy, geography, film studies, and foreign languages. The
project was started by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel, an Assistant Professor in the departments of History and
Art History and Theory at the ENS, Ulm, and an appointed researcher at the Institut d’histoire moderne
et contemporaine, UMR 8066. The project is at the core of a collaboration between the Humanities of the
ENS (departments of Art History and Theory, Geography, History, Social Sciences, Foreign Languages
and Literatures) and its scientific disciplines (mathematics and computer sciences in particular). More than
half of those involved in ARTLAS, however, come from other institutions, French or foreign universities:
universities of Paris I, Paris IV, Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris XIII, Paris Ouest Nanterre, Lille III,
Tours and Rouen, INHA, EHESS, Sciences Po Paris, BNF, Manchester University, the Scuola Normale
Superiore di Pisa, Freie Universität Berlin, Univ. Libre de Bruxelles, Columbia University and Purdue
University (USA).