Complexhibit is supported by a consolidated line of research developed since 2015 by the group iArtHis_Lab (University of Malaga) in cooperation with others partners national and international, focusing on the study of art exhibitions using computational methodologies and Complexity Sciences approaches.

Previous projects that serve as a basis include the following:

• Exhibitium (2015-2016)funded by the BBVA Foundation, whose objective was to generate knowledge about art exhibitions for their reuse. Within this framework, methodologies for data collection and production were implemented, the architecture and model of the corpus was designed, and a new model was developed. Expofinder and the first macroscopic analyses of the Spanish exhibition system in the period 2010-2016 were initiated.
• Andalex (2017-2021)funded first by the Agencia Pública Centro de Estudios Andaluces (Junta de Andalucía) and then by the research plan of excellence of the Junta de Andalucía, broadened the focus to the field of the creative economy. The Andalusian exhibition system (2008-2018) was analysed and the following was developed PathfinderThe Expofinder system is an open system that allows access to and export of data recorded in Expofinder in standard formats.

Thanks to these projects, the team now has a repository of more than 72,000 recordsincluding exhibitions, cultural institutions, actors and relationships, constituting the first and only repository of structured data on art exhibitions in Spain available for analysis and reuse.

These advances - technological infrastructures, data production and analysis methodologies, and accumulated experience - provide the foundation on which to build. Complexhibitwhose challenge is to broaden the framework of study by incorporating the semantic-discursive dimension and deepening our understanding of the expository system as a hyper-complex cultural system.