2021 Worksreport
LaoZhu (ZHU Qingsheng)
Sept.3rd 2021
Last five years, Jean-Marie, Tristan and I have worked closely for CIHA together. Jean-Marie and Tristan will have a report on membership and financial issues respectively. Now I will give a report on our work.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been confronted with great difficulties that people have never encountered globally and historically. Unusual effort was made by our colleagues. Particularly, we look forward to our Italian and Brazilian colleagues’ work for the CIHA World Congresses.
We have promoted some projects since the beginning of taking office in 2016.
First, the website
The official website of CIHA has been established for the CIHA 2016 (http://www.ciha2016.org/). We hope that news on Art and Art History, new materials, new methods, and new research of every country can reach art historians everywhere. With the website, we can strengthen two aspects of our work. Firstly, our activities and publications will be updated daily or weekly. Secondly, we could establish links with various countries. Not only should we have a connection with related websites of these countries, but also link art historical activities in these countries. In this way, news and situations in our member countries will be reflected on the website and will be known by colleagues in other countries in a timely manner.
Since January 2021, the World Arthistory Institute at Shanghai International Studies University has managed the CIHA official website (ciha.org) as the operating team. Its main task is to keep the information of member countries up to date as well as publish important news related to CIHA. It aims to present the latest development of art history researches all around the world and promote the exchange and collaboration between member countries.
To update their own page, member countries can directly send an E-mail with their requirements to the operating team (wai@shisu.edu.cn). Once the team receives the information, they will normally update the website within 24 hours. In the past few months, the operating team has updated the information of 10 member committees, including Brazil, Finland, France, Georgia, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
Meanwhile, the operating team has also published latest news related to CIHA on the home page, such as: Call For Contribution for the CIHA Journal, CIHA São Paulo “Motion: Migrations”, New Year’s Greeting from the president LaoZhu. Currently, the operating team is also working with the team of the 36th World Congress of Art History to publish relative information on the CIHA website.
E-Journal
CIHA website may be transformed into a platform in a way that it not only releases information one-way but also publishes research papers which may receive feedbacks online. The website will thus become a part of the CIHA journal and its extension. It will be updated regularly and frequently. The capacity of the publication online will be larger than that of on paper. In the future the papers could even be first published online and further published on paper.
CIHA website may be transformed into a platform in a way that it not only releases information one-way but also publishes research papers which may receive feedbacks online. The website will thus become a part of the CIHA journal and its extension. It will be updated regularly and frequently. The capacity of the publication online will be larger than that of on paper. In the future the papers could even be first published online and further published on paper.
CIHA E-Journal plans to adopt Preprint for art history scholars from various countries to release research papers that have not been published yet in official publications, with all copyright reserved by the author. This proposal was made in 2016 and the Design — the preliminary plan was submitted for discussion in Florence Board-Meeting in 2019. Since the members were inconsistent, the working method is still in the trial stage.(See Appendix: Interface Design of CIHA E-Journal)
Second, publication
The project of resuming CIHA journal was firstly proposed in 2010. The decision was made in 2017 for that the journal would represent a special viewpoint of CIHA. Different perspectives and methods from different cultures will be considered into the research, criticism, and propulsion. In the past years, my colleagues and I have considered how to run the journal with a new method. Focusing on the growth of knowledge, we have done many experiments. The latest CIHA journal develops from the old one the Bulletin of CIHA, which was first published in 1873[1] and phased out in 1970s. During the Board Meeting in 2017, 2018 and 2019, republishing the CIHA journal has been discussed and finally approved. The new CIHA journal is mainly organized by CIHA and the World Arthistory Institute (WAI) at Shanghai International Studies University assists the organizing and editing work. The journal will be published one volume every year, with each volume naming and targeting a perspective that triggers certain terms as concepts and as paradigms. The editorial team consists of Academic and Administrative (Treasure) Secretaries , the ex-Secretaries of CIHA, as well as a rotating chief editor, who is professional regarding relative volume themes. The first volume this year is named Terms of Engagement and edited by Prof. Thierry Dufrêne and Prof. Peter J. Schneemann. The editorial team has already received some nice pieces and around 10 essays will be selected. Professional proofreaders are checking all the papers now. Once the editorial team agrees the quality is good enough, the paper will be handed over to the WAI to start the editing process. Then they will be officially published by the Commercial Press, which is the most powerful and influential publishing house with the longest history in China. The whole editing process will last about three to four months and by the end of this year, the first volume will be estimated to be published.
Third, Civil Aesthetic Education
We hope CIHA would establish a common program. For example, we can set art history online courses. Hence we are planning on a project, titled “Best for Everyone”. It will invite eminent scholars to give a ten-minute-long lecture in their mother tongue, on topics or works that fit with their expertise. Subtitles will then be added to the lecture in different languages. The next step is to upload the lecture on the internet, so that scholars around the world can have access to it.
The project is currently blocked because of the pandemic, we hope to continue it in the future!
Fourth, common database
Since CIHA is an academic association, I hope we can set a common database. Actually, we continue following the direction opened up by the old generations of scholars and advancing database in CIHA. Meanwhile, recently, the following aspects have become more and more obvious. The network links between some regions, some languages and some topics have been basically completed. This pandemic has in turn promoted the active motivation and technology in sharing remotely at this point.
CIHA is dedicating and creating a more complete, comprehensive, connected entire database system within the scope of CIHA, which would enable art historians and others from various countries to know new findings and discoveries in the world, including new achievements on traditional research. Many museums have already contributed to the development of similar databases or shared knowledge systems. How to further the cooperation between various countries, cultures, and systems could be considered by CIHA.
We may try to use blockchain to share image and document databases between museums, libraries and archives around the world. The catalogs of all databases would be recorded in the blockchain, while the databases of each institute could be used as blocks to construct a distributed data storage. Each transaction of a file would be kept in a distributed ledger that cannot be modified by a single participant, and thus copyrighted data could be circulated or even traded under certain agreements.
I believe our hope will be realized in the future !
[1] As a part of Mitteilungen des K.K. Oesterreichischen Museums für Kunst und Industrie, 8, 1873, S. 400-524 Teil 1