Fragments and Frameworks
Illuminated Manuscripts and Illustrated Books in Digital Humanities
Friday, October 1
The study of art history has long dealt with fragments and processes of fragmentation. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated books in particular may have their fragments and folia fugitiva—pieces of material—separated from a whole collection or corpus. Many thousands of drawings and miniatures are dispersed around the world, including those donated to the National Gallery of Art by Lessing J. Rosenwald. The adoption of open-access online collections has enabled new avenues for study. Open digital frameworks promise to bring new data and new attention to these objects and to ask critical questions about their provenance and conservation. This conference will discuss fragments and frameworks, actual and conceptual, in art history and related disciplines, and address emerging questions in digital humanities. What kinds of afterlives are incurred by processes of fragmentation and cutting? How does the concept of the frame or framework inform the study of illuminated manuscripts and illustrated books? How does the concept of (digital) remediation inform our approach to these works?
This conference is made possible by the Kress-Murphy Fund, established in recognition of Franklin D. Murphy’s commitment to the traditions of European book and manuscript illustration.
Morning Session: 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Register for morning session (11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.)
Steven Nelson
The Center, National Gallery of Art
Welcome
Matthew J. Westerby, moderator
The Center, National Gallery of Art
Catherine Yvard
Victoria and Albert Museum
Framing the Gaze: Some Thoughts on Illuminated Manuscripts and Cuttings
Cristina Dondi
Lincoln College, University of Oxford, and Secretary of CERL
Books as Fragments of Libraries—Illustrations as Fragments of Books: A Digital Illustrated Census of Dante’s Comedia (1481)
John Delaney and Michelle Facini
National Gallery of Art
Collaborative Technical Study and a Machine Learning Future for Illuminated Manuscripts
Bryan Keene
Riverside City College
Encompassing the Globe: Digital Scholarship and Virtual Reconstructions of Illuminated Manuscripts
Afternoon Session: 2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
Register for afternoon session (2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.)
Peter M. Lukehart, moderator
The Center, National Gallery of Art
Welcome and introduction
Lisa Fagin Davis
Medieval Academy of America
Medieval Fragments and Modern Fragmentology
LauraLee Brott
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The Materiality of Medieval Maps in the Age of Digital Discovery
Heather Bamford
George Washington University
Out of Practice, Uncertain Cultures
Matthew J. Westerby
The Center, National Gallery of Art
Frameworks for Fragments: The Digital Lives of Miniatures
Ginger Hammer, Matthew J. Westerby, and Michelle Facini studying works from the Rosenwald Collection in the National Gallery’s Print Study Room, July 2021