Episode 07: What’s in a Name? Miniature Art and the Illusion of Neutrality

This episode began with a simple question: are miniature competitions fairer when names are removed? But what if fairness is far more complicated than that? In this episode, I look at a whole landscape of bias in miniature art evaluation: halo and contrast effects, stylistic bias, fatigue, and sequence order, and why anonymity can’t fix what’s built into human perception.

I also explore what names really add: history, dialogue, and the threads that connect our community. Fairness doesn’t come from hiding an artist’s name; it comes from understanding how we see. And in the age of AI, keeping the artist visible may be more important than we realize.