Mapping Senufo: Making Visible Debatable Information and Situated Knowledge

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi, Emory University; Constantine Petridis, The Art Institute of Chicago
• Language: English
• Date: 2022
• Publisher: Art Institute Chicago
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2022 by The Art Institute of Chicago.
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Final Published Version (URL): https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593152/03
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Perspectives on Data
• Keywords: display; Data Feminism; Catherine D’Ignazio; tombstones; West Africa; collections management system (CMS); database; museum labels; data visualization; Lauren F. Klein
• Research Categories: Fine Arts; Computer Science

Abstract

A museum’s collections management system (CMS), like other databases, converts uncertain details into unquestioned particulars. Presenting information in distinct fields using standardized vocabularies reinforces the notion that the inputs are fixed and incontrovertible. Information provided in museum label “tombstones”—the brief non-narrative sections that list maker, date of creation, media, and other details—often mirrors the details found in museum databases. It also usually appears certain rather than a result of ongoing research and thus subject to further scrutiny. So, too, do data visualizations, including the display of spatial coordinates on maps, rely on databases and tend to favor precision and obscure ambiguity. These methods of knowledge capture, analysis, and dissemination reinforce the idea that there exists a single authoritative, all-knowing position from which objective truths may be discerned. As digital humanists and data theorists Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein explain in their recent book Data Feminism, “identifying information as data, rather than as [evidence or fact], served a rhetorical purpose. It converted otherwise debatable information into the solid basis for subsequent claims.”[1] D’Ignazio and Klein exhaustively demonstrate that data and their representations are actually subjective and selective. Accordingly, as art historian and digital humanist Emily Pugh argues, our understandings of art and history depend on our capacities to identify and assess the various ways in which librarians, archivists, and other researchers manipulate and manage the information used to construct arguments.