Digital Image Interview Series November, 2006
Robert Nelson, Robert Lehman Professor, History of Art, Yale University

Robert Nelson studies and teaches medieval art at Yale University. He came to Yale in 2005, after a long and distinguished career at the University of Chicago. It was there that he started teaching with digital images, and he has not looked back. He is co-curator of the exhibition Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, on display at the Getty Museum through March 4, 2007.

Academic Commons: Let's start by asking about your own engagement with digital images.
Nelson: I'm very interested in this because I've written about the history of the slide lecture and so I'm actually quite interested in this transition.[1] The coming of slides transformed art history and I believe this will make not the same transition, the same revolution, but it's definitely going to make a big change.

Art history is frozen in a certain technological state. There was once a time when art history and film were basically the same medium but art history is frozen in late-19th-century technology that has survived into the early 21st century. Whereas film went on to many other things - there were talking pictures, there were DVDs and many more manifestations, and now art history will move into that larger realm.

So how is it changing what you're doing in the classroom ?
Well it's changing many things. But first I'd like to say why I've made the switch. I told people when I first arrived here [2005] I'm not going to show a slide at Yale University. Come hell or high water, no matter what happens, I'm not going to show a slide at Yale University! So, I've completely made the switch. And the reason is that students learn much better. That is the most important reason.