Student Spotlight

Art history graduate student Paul Albert teamed with School of Business faculty members Laurie Meamber and Gautham Vadakkepatt to participate in the National Gallery of Art (NGA)’s first-ever datathon “Coding our Collection.” NGA invited teams of art historians and data scientists to analyze its collection data and present their findings. Teams looked at diversity in the materials on display at the gallery, diversity in the gallery’s acquisitions over time, and other topics. The Mason team looked at the popularity of the artists in the NGA’s collections and assigned each artist an engagement score. These scores, Albert notes, can “help the NGA leverage the public’s interest and shape its social media efforts.” 

—Reported by Colleen Kearney Rich