Starting with an analyst position at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as the Data Lead for the Google Art Project, and now on the Content Team of the Google Cultural Institute, Piotr Adamczyk’s work is focused on the use of open/linked data in cultural heritage institutions. Piotr has a background a little different than many who will attend CAA’s THATCamp –  undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science, and graduate degrees in Human Factors and Library and Information Science. He’s authored papers, organized workshops, and served as a Program Committee member for the Association for Computing Machinery and cultural heritage conferences, and his arts research includes residencies at the Banff New Media Institute, Medialab-Prado, and Eyebeam.

He’ll join us at THATCamp to discuss: “What’s Google up to? A quick overview of all of the Google Culture Institute initiatives available to artists, galleries, libraries, archives, museums – large and small. What technology, support, storage, hardware, and tools are available … and is there a catch?” Take a sneak peek at Google’s new Open Gallery project here.

1. What is your current involvement with “digital art history”?

   Providing a platform for digitized collections. The Google Cultural Institute partners with non-profit institutions (380+) to host copyright-free or copyright-cleared content at no cost with no transfer of rights and provides the same publishing tools for use by anyone on their own websites. For non-profit institutions, we also provide Street View of their public galleries along with a very high resolution photograph of one object from their collection.

2. What is one of the most pressing issues in the field of “digital art history” today?

   Publication. Everyone involved is grappling with the (perfect) process and the longer we take to create an environment (good-enough) where compelling scholarship can be produced, distributed, and found by academic and broader audiences, the longer we’re stuck arguing about relevance and identity rather than making new work.

3. Where do you see innovations happening?

   Among institutions, most innovative work seems to be coming from the midsize. Too small and they’re worried about staying afloat. Too large and they too often tackle technical problems for which they have great ideas but develop solutions that can’t be replicated by others. The midsize, those with just enough staff or resources (even in one department – education, tech, publications) to think beyond their day-to-day tasks, are finding compelling solutions to the problems faced by all.

4. What’s the panel or issue you’d most like to see proposed for THATCamp CAA in Chicago?

   Preparing materials for departments, colleges, and universities to help them understand digital art history scholarship — all in the service of improving scholarly recognition and tenure cases for faculty willing to experiment.