As a computer science major at Carleton, graphs are one of my favorite data structures, and I enjoy looking in many ways data is visualized through graphs. For this blog, I decided to choose Inventing Abstraction from MoMA. MoMA is a museum located in NYC that showcases many art displays. MoMA has designed a network that maps the relationships of artists who played a significant role in the development of modern art between the years 1910 and 1925.
Each node of the network represents a specific artist, and they are sorted into two different colors. Orange nodes represent artists who have 24 connections, while the white nodes represent artists who have fewer connections. Each edge of the network represents whether the artist knew each other during their time. For instance, Kazimir Malevich is connected to Kesnia Ender as they were acquaintances during the time.
According to MoMA, the exhibition was made possible by Hanjin Shipping and supported in front of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities
By using a graph to represent this network, this project was able to attract my engagement. Before seeing this project, I honestly did not know much about these artists as I rarely spend time looking at artistic pieces. However, the user interaction with this graph made it a fun exercise to traverse through it and learn more about different artists and their impact on modern art. Compared to just reading a regular educational blog or a textbook about these artists, I feel exploring this network for just 10 minutes was more effective in learning about different artists. I think it would be a good idea for other humanities researchers to incorporate networks and graphs to represent their data, as it is a fun and interesting way to learn more about the field.
In the future, I hope to encounter more research and humanities exhibitions represented by networks.
