ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the digital strategies that the Center for the Art of East Asia (CAEA) in the Department of Art History, Division of Humanities, at the University of Chicago has devised and implemented over these fourteen years to analyze and communicate research into traditional East Asian painting and sculpture. It introduces the digital imaging technologies and open-source software that we have used and developed for interactive viewing of paintings and sculptures that make them more fully and widely accessible than in the past. Art historians struggle to interpret works of art and visual culture the content of which has acquired multiple meanings rooted in religious concepts, political ideologies, and artistic imagination. The CAEA’s digital imaging projects offer effective visual access to works of East Asian art, providing accurate information and interactive capabilities so as to facilitate insights into their material, spatial, and visual characteristics in historical contexts.
