The University of Richmond Museums opens Crooked Data: (Mis)Information in Contemporary Art on February 9 through May 5, 2017, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. The exhibition features art by twenty-one contemporary artists and studios who work with data in nontraditional ways. Some artists incorporate data from known sources, using it as an aesthetic device divorced from its originally intended interpretive function. Others gather and manifest data that might normally be considered not worthy of collecting. And some of the works explore alternatives to standard data visualization forms and practices.

“We see data and data visualization everywhere — graphs in the news about voting statistics, interactive maps on our phones, animated weather radars and charts, standardized testing scores, etc.,” says the exhibition curator N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University Museums.  “The artists in this exhibition use data and data visualization as their subject and their process, creatively questioning our assumptions about how we decide what information is important and how we communicate and interpret information visually.”