This course will be offered in Winter 2027 as INF2512H Special Topics in ARM: Digital Humanities in Art and Architecture Archives.
How are machines changing the way we “see” collections? Digital technologies—from databases and metadata mining to AI and computer vision— are reshaping how the public, museum professionals, and researchers access, organize, and interpret visual materials. For instance, these technologies make it possible to analyze collections both on an unprecedented scale and in granular detail, revealing hidden patterns and relationships across records. Drawing on digital humanities and digital art history, and examining institutional initiatives such as the Getty Provenance Index (TracingArt) alongside art interventions, this course explores the possibilities and challenges of turning archives and cultural heritage into data and considers the theoretical, practical, and ethical questions that arise. Through a combination of readings, class discussions, workshops on digital tools (including databases, knowledge graphs, image recognition, and text analysis), and case studies from museum collections and archives, the course prepares students to critically assess, design, and use emerging data-driven methods for documenting, studying, and presenting cultural collections.
No prior technical knowledge is required. Students with various backgrounds are welcome, as this is an interdisciplinary course! Feel free to contact me for more information at eliza.pertigkiozoglou@utoronto.ca.
Eliza Pertigkiozoglou 