Emily L. Spratt
Profile
Dr. Emily L. Spratt is a Byzantine and Renaissance–Baroque art historian with additional expertise in Data Science. Her areas of specializations include: Venice and the Mediterranean, 1400–1700; the Hellenic world from antiquity to the Greek independence movement; icons; museums and cultural heritage preservation; aesthetic theory; computer vision technology and machine learning in the arts; ethics and AI; and advisory in the AI and computer vision-related business sectors. As a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Columbia University, Spratt is leading an interdisciplinary initiative on the use and development of AI-enhanced technologies for the analysis, generation, and curation of art and architecture, the ethics surrounding this subject, and its philosophical implications and bearings.
Spratt completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University with a dissertation on the artistic and cultural legacy of Byzantium in the early modern period. She also holds an M.A. from the department in Renaissance art history, an M.A. in Byzantine art history from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a B.A. in religious studies, the history of art, and psychology from Cornell University. Previously, Spratt taught in the Department of Art History and the program in cultural heritage management at Rutgers University.
With experience at the Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens, the Benaki Museum, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, The Frick Collection and Art Reference Library, and Iconem, Spratt has been a collaborator on a number of international projects and exhibitions. Currently, Spratt is working on a major cultural heritage and technology project related to the Post-Byzantine icons from the Ionian Islands, Greece.
Spratt has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Onassis Foundation, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the Cini Foundation in Venice, the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institution, the American Research Center in Sofia, Bulgaria, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Frick Collection and Art Reference Library, and from the universities from where she holds degrees. She is on the digital and multimedia advisory board of the Renaissance Society of America, is a steering-committee member for The Frick Collection and Art Reference Library Scholars' Advisory Group, is on the advisory board of the Artificial Intelligence Finance Institute of New York, and is the ethics adviser of Iconem. Emily's insights on art and cultural heritage, A.I., ethics, and society have been sought in articles and interviews with the Washington Post, CBS News, Agence France-Presse, Chosun Media, Science News, City Press, and other news outlets.
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
“On the Gothic Edits of Notre Dame de Paris,” Future Anterior, University of Minnesota Press (forthcoming).
“Gastronomic Algorithms: Artistic and Sensory Exploration of Alain Passard’s Michelin Plates in the Manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo with GANs,” Leonardo, MIT Press (forthcoming).
“Ingenium, Inventio, Vis, Facilitas: Western Influences in Post-Byzantine Art and the Question of Imitability,” in Patterns, Models, Drawings, eds. Emmanuel Moutafov and Margarita Kuyumdzhieva, Art Readings, Thematic Peer-reviewed Annual in Art Studies, Volumes I-II, Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of the Sciences, Sofia, February 2020.
“Computer Vision Technology and Autonomous Learning Investment Strategies,” co-author with Michael Weinberg, Alternative Investment Management Association Journal, AIMA Edition 117, January 2019. (A longer version of the article is published as “Eyes of the World: Optimizing Computer Vision Technology for Autonomous Learning Investment Strategies,” co-author with Michael Weinberg, Ex Machina, MOV37 Hedge Fund Publication, February 4, 2019.)
“Curating the Visual Landscape of Our Digital World,” Discoveries, Photoarchive, The Frick Collection and Art Reference Library, May 4, 2018.
“Malala and ‘Unhuman: Art in the Age of AI’,” XRDS Magazine, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), vol. 24, no. 2, Spring 2018.
“Creation, Curation, and Classification: Mario Klingemann and Emily L. Spratt in Conversation,” XRDS Magazine, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), vol. 24, no. 2, Spring 2018.
“Computers and Art in the Age of Machine Learning,” INIT Feature Article, XRDS Magazine, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), vol. 24, no. 2, Spring 2018.
“Why the Louvre needs a Byzantine art section,” Apollo, The International Art Magazine, February 2, 2018.
“Dream Formulations and Deep Neural Networks: Humanistic Themes in the Iconology of the Machine-Learned Image,” Kunsttexte.de, Humboldt University of Berlin, Winter 2017.
“Representations of the Liturgy in the Visual Arts,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, eds. Dale C. Allison Jr., Christine Helmer, Choon-Leong Seow, et al., De Gruyter, 2014.
“Computational Beauty: Aesthetic Judgment at the Intersection of Art and Science,” first author with second author Ahmed Elgammal, in Computer Vision: ECCV Conference Proceedings 2014, Springer Verlag, 2014.
“The Digital Humanities Unveiled: Perceptions Held by Art Historians and Computer Scientists about Computer Vision Technology,” Web publication, Fall 2014.
“Toward a Definition of ‘Post-Byzantine’ Art: The Angleton Collection at the Princeton University Art Museum,” Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 71, June 2014 (double issue, 2012–2013).
“New Acquisitions,” co-author with J. Michael Padgett, Princeton University Art Museum Magazine, Fall 2011.
“Dimitrios Talaganis, an Exceptional Installation Artist,” in Dimitrios Talaganis, a Catalog of Works, Artist publication, Fall 2006.
Exhibitions Curated
“Au-delà du Terroir, Beyond AI Art,” Global Forum on AI for Humanity, Institut de France, Quai Conti, Paris, October 28–30, 2019.
“Unhuman: Art in the Age of AI,” STATE Studio Pop-Up Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, and The Arts+Event, Frankfurt Book Fair, Frankfurt, Germany, October 2017.
“Beyond the Edges,” Photography exhibition for the Theoretical Archaeological Group Art Gallery, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, May 23–25, 2014.