Is Structure Context or Content? A Data-Driven Method of Comparing Museum Collections

Sa？etak This paper presents a method which depicts a museum collection as a relational venue structure. This venue structure is constructed from the exhibition history of the artists acquired by the museum, in such a way that it uniquely characterizes the collection. Such a structure can be conceived as a historical fingerprint of a collection. The paper compares such derived historical fingerprints of three canonical museum collections: that of the Tate Collection in the UK, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The goal is to develop the understanding of the way they represent the art of the Central-East European region. The research shows that the representation formed by the three museums on the region relies on specific venues and connections among them. Furthermore, the analysis has identified patterns within these structures that contribute to the formation of the representations in typical ways. As a result, the agency of museums is tackled from a data-driven perspective highlighting the social embeddedness of representations, and a method is introduced that enables comparison of collections built through distinctive acquisition histories