James Elkins
is participant at
A New Geography of Art in the Making
Abstract
Is Art History Global?
In the last five or ten years the question of art history’s global reach—or lack of it—has appeared as an inescapable topic for art history. As the discipline of art history wakens to the possibility of worldwide art historical writing, it also becomes more seriously engaged with postcolonial theory, critical theory, anthropology, visual studies, cultural studies, and subaltern studies, all of which have been intermittently or continuously interested in art practices outside of Europe and North America. This lecture reports on the most recent attempts to understand the phenomenon: the book Is Art History Global?; the book World Art Studies; the 2007 Stone Summer Theory Institute; the essay “Canon and Globalization in Art History”; a current October questionnaire; a conference in Beijing in May; David Carrier’s new book; Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann’s conferences; Whitney Davis’s work in progress; an exchange with Hans Belting; and an essay by Paul Wood.
