8/14: To be honest arriving at ASA to see a big ol’ blown up version of the book cover at the Stanford booth was pretty exciting. As are the blurbs I got to read:

“The Work of Art offers an intimate investigation of the economics of earning a living making art: where the money comes from and where it goes, and how artists justify, to themselves and others, their strategies for supporting their work. Alison Gerber makes a solid contribution to sociology, to economics, and to our understanding of the practicalities of an artistic career.”

—Howard S. Becker, author of Art Worlds

“Alison Gerber’s The Work of Art is a welcome treatment of how artists develop their self-conceptions and their production practices. This account expands our insight into a cutting edge area of economic and cultural sociology, examining the art world where questions of valuation and good work are highly salient, and provides an exciting approach to how material objects are given value. Personal and powerful, Gerber’s work will alter how those who care about the lives of artists think about the role of money and identity in the creative process.”

—Gary Alan Fine, author of Everyday Genius

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5/31: Good news! We’ve been awarded 450,000 crowns in funding from the Crafoord Foundation to support our work in the Rädda Bildarvet (aka Rädda Bildminnet) project. It’s a collaboration between the sociology department at Lund University and Landskrona Foto, and we’re focused on photographs as data + practice across disciplines, the development of new search + discovery tools for digitized images, and the value + valuation of photographic cultural heritage. Thanks much to Crafoordska!

5/29: A new network at Lund University for research on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning just launched, and I’ve been really impressed at the level to which the social sciences and humanities are represented in the network and how central their voices are, along with the math and computer science folks you’d expect. There’s a proto-website where you can find out more, and if you’re interested you should definitely put a “save the date” in your calendar for the next fika-to-fika all-day meetings on September 26 and November 22.

4/27: Clayton and I wrote up a summary of our American Behavioral Scientist article (preprint available here) for the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) DataBrief; you can read our overview here. I also gave a talk to the SNAAP+ Leadership Forum yesterday, which is a pretty great group of art school folks from all over the country; I think it was recorded, and I’ll link to it once I can. Thanks much to SNAAP for letting us peek into their data, and especially to Associate Research Director Alex Frenette for helping us with the numbers and for his kind welcome last night.

3/22: There’s a thoughtful review of my new book in the Culture Section’s winter newsletter. Thanks to Whitney Johnson for taking the time to read and write about my work!

3/19: Was happy to present preliminary work on the Rädda Bildminnet project and plans for the future together with Landskrona Foto at a seminar on photographic preservation and access as part of the National Archives’ 400th birthday tour. Very roughly, our work includes a couple of interconnected projects, including the development of new digital search and discovery tools for digitized images and an investigation of photography as data and practice across disciplines in academic research. Get in touch if you’re interested in finding out more about what we’re doing or working with us!

3/15: Back from three days outside Oslo with the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme and their research fellows. Norway is moving towards its own “artistic research” model quite distinct from others, and it was an interesting meeting, with some really excellent work. Check out Bull.Miletic for an example of the kinds of things happening over there, or maybe go spend some time with Bjørn Erik Haugen’s work; pictured here, a lovely scratch-off postcard from Juliane Zelwies inviting participation in her research.

2/19: Heading to Baltimore for Easterns and very much looking forward to it. Come by and say hi at one of the two panels I’ll be a part of on Thursday the 22nd: at noon I’ll be on a pretty amazing panel talking about new work, and then at 3:30 we’ll do an author-meets-critics type thing about my book that came out just now – I’m pretty excited to hear what these folks think! Hope to see you there-

1/22: I did an interview about my new book with Dave O’Brien on the New Books Network. You can get it as a podcast, or you can stream / download it here. Hope you like it!

1/10: If you follow me on the sosh meeds you probably are aware that there was sort of a viral kerfluffle last month. If you got in touch with me at the end of December about something real, apologies for the fact that I probably didn’t see your message or respond, and give me another holler if you feel so moved.

12/1: New digs at Lund University officially occupied. It’s an old and odd place, and I look forward to finding out more about its nooks and crannies (pictured: Nasoteket, the museum of noses).