Between Preservation and Repurposing

How to Recontextualize and Reorient Twenty-Year-Old Art-Historical Databases

Abstract

This article presents a solution for the sustained use of a legacy database by means of data curation based on the example of a research project undertaken by the German Center for Art History Paris (DFK Paris). The wave of digitization of the 1990s and early 2000s gave rise to a large number of databases that are, today, becoming obsolete by lack of technical support. This means that the research data, as a slice of academic history, is in danger of being lost. This article’s contribution describes a possible form of recontextualization within a data curation project that takes the example of a database that originated at DFK Paris between 1999 and 2006: the project “Deutsch-französische Kunstvermittlung 1870–1940 und 1945–1960” (Art discourse between France and Germany 1870–1940 and 1945–1960). In three stages, the authors examine the semantic enrichment of the data, the historical context of the project and, employing mediaarchaeological and other methods, the reconstruction of the original data structure. The data’s character as an artifact is taken into consideration throughout, and a restructuring of the data ruled out. The historicity of the database “Deutsch-französische Kunstvermittlung” is also reflected in its new user interface.