Holger Simon

Holger Simon (2019)

Holger Simon (born July 30, 1969 in Tübingen ) is a German art historian and entrepreneur. His main research interests are art communication, new media and cultural entrepreneurship . He is an adjunct professor at the University of Cologne and lecturer at the Department of Image Sciences at the Danube University Krems . Together with partner institutions he developed at the University of Cologne, the image archive Prometheus and after the collapse of the Cologne City Archive the digital Historical Archive of Cologne . He is the managing partner of Pausanio GmbH & Co. KG and director of the Pausanio Academy .

Career

Simon completed a degree in art history, philosophy and education at the University of Cologne, which he completed in 1996 with an MA . After a graduate scholarship, he did his doctorate in 1998 with Günther Binding on the Marien Altar of the Creglingen Herrgottskirche by Tilman Riemenschneider .

After a traineeship at Museum Schnütgen , Simon worked at the Art History Institute of the University of Cologne, where from 2001 he was responsible for setting up the distributed digital Prometheus image archive, which has significantly advanced the use of digital image media in teaching by providing central access to made available to the various resources of cooperating institutions (universities, archives, museums). After four years of funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research , the archive has been operated and developed since 2004 by a non-profit association of which Holger Simon is a founding member and chairman. Since 2003 he has also been a member of the jury for the L. Fritz Gruber Prize of Cologne University.

Since his habilitation in 2007 ( The Morphology of the Image. An Art-Historical Method of Art Communication ), Simon has worked as a private lecturer at Cologne University and since 2008 as a lecturer at Danube University Krems. Since 2013 he has been an adjunct professor for art history at the University of Cologne.

After the collapse of the Cologne City Archives on March 3, 2009, he was one of the main initiators of the Digital Historical Archive Cologne, in which digitized archives were made available for public use as quickly as possible; the project was nominated for the Grimme Online Award .

Simon is the author of a number of essays on late Gothic and early modern sculpture. Another focus of his publications is the topic of digital media in art history.

In 2009, Simon switched to business, where he combines his art-historical and digital skills. He founded the companies Pausanio (2009) and Artguide (2010), which deal with the development of mobile apps , audio guides and audio books in the arts and culture. Since 2013 he has been concentrating increasingly with the newly founded Pausanio Academy on further training and advice for cultural institutions on the topics of digital transformation and change management . The preservation and financial security of cultural assets play just as important a role as the development of viable business models.

Simon is married and has four children; he lives with his family in Königswinter.

Awards

• Digital Minds of the Society for Computer Science  as part of the Science Year 2014 - The Digital Society

Publications (selection)

• The Creglinger Marienaltar by Tilman Riemenschneider. Publishing house for science and research , Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89700-052-0 (also dissertation 1998, Cologne)
• Architectural representations in Ottonian book illumination. The Old Cologne Cathedral in the Hillinus Codex. In: Stefanie Lieb (Ed.): Style and Form (Festschrift Binding), Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft , Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 978-3-53414-959-9 , pp. 32–44.
• The theoretical foundations of the modern image in Nikolaus von Kues . in: Concilium Medii Aevi (CMA) Vol. 7, Edition Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISSN  1437-9058 pp. 45-76.
• The morphology of the image: an art-historical method of art communication. VDG Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-89739-692-0 , (also habilitation thesis, 2007)
• Library entry in: Encyclopedia of Modern Times , Vol. 2, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005 Online (pdf)
• “Prometheus” and Justitia - Image archives of the arts and cultural studies in the field of tension between the media upheaval and a digital information society. In: Karl-Nikolaus Peifer , Gudrun Gersmann (Ed.): Research and teaching in the information age - between freedom of access and the incentive to privatize, (Writings on European Copyright Vol. 4), Berlin 2007, pp. 65–86.

Web links

• Vita on holger-simon.de
• List of publications on holger-simon.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Xing profile Holger Simon
2. ^ Susan Müller-Wusterwitz, Michael Müller: From eLearning to mLearning. New paths in art history education. DGWF Annual Conference 2004: Change in University Cultures? Scientific further education between culture and commerce. Workshop 4: New cultures of learning and new technologies.
3. ↑ From project to association - the story of prometheus prometheus-bildarchiv.de
4. ↑ Grimme Online Award: Nominated 2009 ( Memento from May 15, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Julia Schmitz: Ideenschmiede für die Kulturbetrieb kunst-magazin.de, February 7, 2013, accessed on May 24, 2014 ( Memento from May 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Short biography on pausanio-akademie.de, accessed on May 31, 2014 ( Memento from May 31, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ digital-ist.de: Holger Simon, professor of art history and founder of Pausanio GmbH & Co.KG ( Memento from October 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ); "From the jury's reasoning: As a scientist, young entrepreneur, innovator and pioneer, Holger Simon develops visionary projects in which he applies the possibilities of digitization in the world of culture."