Abstract

This thesis examines current approaches to digital art history, while arguing for the importance of integrating decolonizing methodologies into digital platforms. As a case-study, the thesis analyzes how the artwork of Nadia Myre (an Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg First Nation, b. 1974) appears on the websites of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Mûr gallery and AbTeC virtual gallery. In this thesis, I draw on the visual theorist Johanna Drucker’s distinction between “digitized art history” and “digital art history,” as well as concerns raised by the art historian Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega about the techno-determinism surrounding digital art history – to construct a critical approach to the process of art history going digital. I offer decolonizing methodology as a way forward that implicitly answers these scholars’ calls for methodological complexity in digital art history. Referring to Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s influential writings on decolonizing methodologies, I use the concepts of “remembering” and “reframing” as decolonizing sub-categories, or strategies, as a theoretical framework through which to examine a range of digital platforms. Even though these sub-categories are not the only possible approaches to take, they are a compelling place to start investigating how digital art history resonates with older art historical methodologies, and how digital practices can transform art history in a critical way.