Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

“The Digital Recreation of the Lenox Library Picture Gallery: A Contribution to the Early History of Public Art Galleries in the United States,” is a fully interactive, online recreation of the Lenox Library Art Gallery, published in October 2018 by the ejournal Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide. This interdisciplinary, digital humanities project connects traditional research found in art history with new research methods found in digital media, design studies, and the digital humanities. This interactive digital platform reconstructs the eighteen eighties interior of James Lenox’s picture gallery and the art that graced its walls. One can see the paintings and access detailed information on each one, where they hung and what paintings were installed nearby. This 3D model has enabled the scholarly goal of establishing Lenox’s curatorial strategy, its meaning and contemporary context. As a research tool, it is powerful, beautiful and flexible and a robust template for other inquiries into lost art collections. The Lenox Library Art Gallery was a ‘space’ that was made a ‘place’ not only by virtue of its content, but by the addition of an audience. The authors would argue that 3D reconstructions of this kind can create a new audience and therefore a revived form of digital “place,” in addition to providing a more immersive research tool for art historians.