Association of Research Institutes in Art History

2015 Prize for Online Publication

The Association of Research Institutes in Art History (ARIAH) has awarded its 2015 Prize for Online Publication to Pamela M. Fletcher and Anne Helmreich. Their winning article, “Local/Global: Mapping Nineteenth-Century London’s Art Market,” published in Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11, no. 3 (Autumn 2012), offers an impressive depth of original research on the London art market in the later part of the nineteenth century, while also providing a groundbreaking model for digital art history. Fletcher and Helmreich, with the support of David Israel and Seth Erickson, demonstrate how network analysis and data-driven mapping can be used to represent visually the complex relationships among art dealers, collectors, and artists through space and time, but they also consider the interpretive limits of new methodologies—what can and cannot be known after examining thousands of transactions painstakingly gleaned from stock books and other primary sources. The article was nominated by Petra Chu, co-founder and managing editor of Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide. It was chosen from sixty-eight entries. Pamela M. Fletcher is Professor of Art History, Chair of Art Department, and Director of Art History Division, Co-Director of Digital and Computational Studies Initiative at Bowdoin College. Anne Helmreich is Senior Program Officer at the Getty Foundation.

Introduced in 2012, the ARIAH Online Publication Award, which carries a $1,000 prize, seeks to encourage and promote high scholarly standards in online publishing in all fields of art history. “We are extremely pleased by the response that we have received to the ARIAH prize,” said Jon Mogul, chair of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History. “The scope and diversity of the submissions signals the coming of age of online journals and the potential richness of digital platforms for presenting innovative research.”

The prize is open to nominations and self-nominations in an open call for entries. The prize is coordinated by a panel comprised of Ariah members. The panel evaluates submissions, and peer review is conducated by the ARIAH membership. In 2015, the panel consisted of Liza Kirwin, Deputy Director, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Martina Droth, Associate Director of Research and Curator of Sculpture, Yale Center for British Art; and Klaus Ottmann, Director of the Center for the Study of Modern Art and Curator at Large, The Phillips Collection. The final decision was made with input from the full board of ARIAH delegates.