Musings from ArcGIS Mapping: How Does one “Count” Mosaics?
As Maya and I begin uploading our information about the present-day locations of the Antioch mosaics into ArcGIS in our efforts to map their distribution, I was struck by a seemingly simple question I had previously not considered: How does one count mosaics? I do not mean counting in the more abstract and philosophical sense, as what does and does not count as a mosaic. But instead, counting in the more literal and rather mundane sense of how does one physically count (1,2,3, and so on) mosaics and their many fragments (themselves, comprised of thousands of tiny tesserae, but that is perhaps a more philosophical conversation better reserved for another post).
My question developed from the third phase of Maya’s and my project. As Maya detailed in her previous blogpost, we developed a three-phase plan for our mapping of mosaics onto ArcGIS. We completed our first phase of compiling a detailed spreadsheet of all (known) museums and locations currently housing Antioch mosaics. Now, we are in our second and third phases of visually adjusting the map and adding external details like images, links to museum websites, the houses represented in the collection, and potentially including the number of mosaics housed in each collection.
A draft of our ArcGIS distribution map with all the known locations of the mosaics. I am continuing to track down the mosaic, presumably still in Cuba, to add to our map. In the meantime, we have also considered tentatively adding its location and noting efforts for its ongoing search.
When you click on a location, information about the mosaics at this particular location will pop up. While this is just a rough draft, Maya and I are adding external media like links to museum collections as well as images and other information to make it more accessible and user-friendly. We expect to complete our map shortly, but also recognize that it is a living document of sorts, to be updated as new information arises. For example, this mosaic depicting Metiochos and Parthenope, characters from an ancient Greek novel, was sold by Worcester Art Museum to Brummer Gallery, an auction house, in New York. The mosaic was in a 1949 auction by Brummer Gallery, and according to this catalog was sold to Franz Kleinberger Gallery. Much more digging is needed to find its present-day location.
As I began to compile the number of mosaics housed in each collection, I entered a dizzying, and perhaps, more fittingly, a vertiginous world of fragments and the somewhat futile task of trying to take inventory and count them.
Take this fragment of a mosaic depicting theater masks from the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. According to this 1981 article, it is counted as two separate pieces–A and B–that comprise one whole.
Screenshot from Frances F. Jones, "Antioch Mosaics in Princeton," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 40, no. 2 (1981): 19.
However, in the collection, the disparate parts are united, and it is pictured (and cataloged) as one mosaic.
Fragment of a floor mosaic, 3rd Century CE, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 73 x 48 inches.
This brief discussion and the problems that arise thus returns me to the question I posed in the beginning. How then, is one supposed to count these mosaics? The problem with counting is in no way limited to the above example. In some of the mosaics I have encountered, there are sometimes eight or more fragments that comprise the entire mosaic. In some cases, they are consolidated as one object on the online collection. In other cases, the fragments are counted separately.
My brief foray into counting the mosaics and their fragments quickly devolved into a lesson and perhaps, even a cautionary tale. Due to the complexities of counting the fragments and as a matter of practicality, we will likely no longer include how many mosaics are located in each museum collection on our map. However, it is still very much worth dwelling on the seemingly simple, but deceptively complex question: How does one count mosaics? Or, indeed, any fragment for that matter?
Ella Gonzalez