Dr. Christian Huemer

VORTRAG AM FREITAG, 13/11/2015

Dr. Christian Huemer, Los Angeles,  spricht über:

Exploring Art Markets of the Past: Tools and Methods in the Age of Big Data

Datum: 25/04/2016, 18:15 Uhr
Ort: Raum H 1035, Hauptgebäude der TU, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin

Abendvortrag des internationalen Workshops Artists on the Market

Huemer_Bild++Titel, Abstract und CV sind immer in der jeweiligen Vortragssprache wiedergegeben.++

The recent proliferation of data and the emergence of new computational techniques are not only influencing decision making processes in contemporary culture; they also have an increasing impact on our understanding of the past. Big data analytics, defined as the process of examining large amounts of information to uncover hidden patterns and unknown correlations, lend themselves to the study of art markets. Yet, contrary to more quantitatively inclined disciplines such as cultural economics (which usually focus on contemporary data), art history has barely started to endorse this new opportunity. The presentation will discuss examples of how larger datasets from the Getty Provenance Index® (GPI) have been used to analyze networks of buyers and sellers on the European auction market around 1800, as well as the pricing strategy of a major 19th century Parisian art gallery. The GPI, a collection of databases offering free online access to source material for research on the history of collecting and art markets, currently contains 1.5 million records transcribed from widely dispersed source documents such as archival inventories, sale catalogs, and dealer stock books. To facilitate “big data” methodologies for art market studies, the Getty Research Institute is currently working on a complete conceptual and technical overhaul of the Provenance Index which will increase its use as a tool for understanding, not only the lineage of individual masterpieces, but also the aggregate behavior of agents on the art market, shifting tastes and values, and the flow of objects through time and space.

Dr. Christian Huemer is head of the “Project for the Study of Collecting and Provenance” at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, where he has recently overseen international research, database, and book projects, such as “London and the Emergence of a European Art Market, c. 1780-1820” and “The Business of Art in the ‘Third Reich’.” Trained as an art historian at Vienna University, the Paris Sorbonne, and the City University of New York, he is interested in exploring methodological models derived from the social and natural sciences. His CUNY dissertation, “Paris-Vienna: Modern Art Markets and the Transmission of Culture (1873-1937)”, earned him fellowships at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Huemer teaches history of art markets for the Sotheby’s Institute of Art at Claremont Graduate University. He serves as editor-in-chief of a book series entitled “Studies in the History of Collecting & Art Markets” (Brill) and as section editor for France, Switzerland, Austria, and Liechtenstein of the “Art Market Dictionary” (De Gruyter).

No registration required and free admission.

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