Blog: Network Analysis (MOMA’s Inventing Abstraction)

I chose to look into the MOMA’s Inventing Abstraction, a visual network of abstract artists (nodes) and their personal or professional relationships with one another (edges). I had a little bit of trouble finding more information about how the authors defined the parameters of “relationship”; the text underneath the diagram says only that “vectors connect individuals whose acquaintance with one another during these years could be documented.” I think that they included artists that were included in some way in the MOMA exhibit for which the project was created, but I wasn’t positive — the entry for each artist includes an example of their work, but the credits were from a variety of other galleries (Yale, Vanessa Bell Museum, etc.), and I couldn’t tell if those works were actually on loan to the MOMA for the exhibit or if they were just examples given for the purpose of the project.

The extent of the interaction allowed by the network is pretty much what happens when you click on an artist’s name — you get a minimal profile on the artist in a sidebar, and the network zooms in on that artist’s separate network of connections. Once you’re on that screen, you can click on the examples of their art to zoom in on those, or click on one of the other artists in this network, but that’s about it. I think it’s fairly effective for what it is — it gives you a pretty good sense for who knew who. I wish you could tell how each artist knew one another, or maybe even what the historical source is for the connection, but that would be a lot to ask. Each artist is also tagged with “Birthplace,” “Places Worked,” and “Interests,” and I do wish that those tags were clickable so that a user could get a list of the artists included. There might be a lot to learn through the network once it’s filtered by Places Worked: “Spain,” for example. I think that this would be a helpful tool for someone who already has a decent amount of background about this artistic movement and its constituents, but for the average museum-goer, there’s not much to get out of this other than broad impressions about which artists were most influential/well-connected.