What has digital art historz taught us about the (im)possible chronologies of art: the chronology of exhibiting sculpture in Serbia 1945 - 2000 aas a case study

Abstract

In 2019, we launched the Chronology of Exhibiting Sculpture in Serbia 1945–2000 project (available online: https://skulptura-hronologijaizlaganja.rs) with the aim of drawing the attention of art history researchers and museum professionals to the complex history of modern and contemporary sculpture—the heritage that has been neglected, marginalized, and reduced to the very traditional formats of knowledge in the local (Serbian) context, particularly in terms of understanding sculpture as an active transformative agent in the public sphere. This project is research-based, ongoing, and open-access in its character, and it aims at generating a chronologically structured digital database of events: public appearances and expositions of sculpture in Serbia and abroad such as exhibitions, erection of monuments and public sculpture, organization of sculpture colonies and site-specific sculptural production, lectures on sculpture, etc. During the realization of the project — a process that is still ongoing — many questions have arisen concerning the complexity of digitalization as a process of translating and curating the analog, archival material of diversified typology into a specifically designed structure of digital space based on the network logic. In order to share and exchange our experiences with colleagues who think and work in the field of digital art history and digital humanities, we would like to present the Chronology of Exhibiting Sculpture 1945–2000 by mapping a number of challenging issues that arose during the conception and implementation of the project: 1) How to translate and improve the narrative/vertical structure of art historical chronology in non-linear digital space, i.e. how to present temporal events in the digital space of the network? 2) What perspectives does the digital logic of visuali- zation and structuring of historiographical material open to art 102 history in terms of developing new methodologies and historical 103 knowledge? 3) How can such a project encourage the networking of collections and funds, data, tools, and knowledge from different museums and scholarly institutions, organizations from the non-institutional field, and resources on sculpture available on theInternet to create a common digital place available to the public with the aim of re-thinking, preserving, and presenting cultural heritage in a novel manner?