Abstract
In 2023 Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University embarked on an experiment to use AI to curate an exhibition from the museum’s collection. This was, to our knowledge, the first time a museum has done so. We first created a tool to extract publicly accessible information from the museum’s collection database. This dataset of nearly 14,000 objects in the Nasher Museum’s collection was further transformed into machine-readable data that is understandable by OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform. Our team further developed a series of prompts and instructions for ChatGPT that asked it to select artworks for the exhibition. We followed a similar process in the creation of the accompanying wall and label texts and the design of the gallery. This paper explores the capabilities and limitations of AI as curator, the use of the exhibition as a pedagogical tool, and the reception of the project by our university and community visitors. While museum professionals are far from relinquishing control of exhibition making and interpretation, this exercise was a powerful way to explore the applications of AI in the creative realm as related to curatorial authorship and expertise, the subjectivity of the selection process, and the future impact of technology on museums. We ultimately discovered that although AI was not a substitute for the human curator, it could be a powerful curatorial collaborator.
Presenters
Julia Mc HughDirector of Academic Initiatives and Curator of Arts of the Americas , Nasher Museum of Art; Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, Duke University , North Carolina, United States Julianne Miao
Curatorial Assistant, Curatorial, Nasher Musuem of Art at Duke University, North Carolina, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2024 Special Focus—Images and Imaginaries from Artificial Intelligence
KEYWORDS
Museums, Artificial Intelligence, AI as Pedagogical Tool, Exhibitions, Interpretation
