ABSTRACT

Making Art History is a collection of essays by contemporary scholars on the practice and theory of art history as it responds to institutions as diverse as art galleries and museums, publishing houses and universities, school boards and professional organizations, political parties and multinational corporations.

The text is split into four thematic sections, each of which begins with a short introduction from the editor, the sections include:

  • Border Patrols, addresses the artistic canon and its relationship to the ongoing 'war on terror', globalization, and the rise of the Belgian nationalist party.
  • The Subjects of Art History, questions whether 'art' and 'history' are really what the discipline seeks to understand.
  • Instituting Art History, concerns art history and its relation to the university and raises questions about the mission, habits, ethics and limits of university today.
  • Old Master, New Institutions, shows how art history and the museum respond to nationalism, corporate management models and the 'culture wars'.

chapter |9 pages

Introduction

Making art history a profession

part I|68 pages

Border patrols

chapter 1|15 pages

The call of the canon

Why art history cannot do without

chapter 2|23 pages

From the Prophet to postmodernism?

New world orders and the end of Islamic art

chapter 4|12 pages

What's in a name?

“Flanders,” language, and the historiography of late medieval art in Belgium since federalization

part II|62 pages

The subjects of art history

chapter 5|19 pages

Art history's present tense

chapter 6|15 pages

The totality of form S.J.

Freedberg's criticism and Clement Greenberg's history

chapter 7|14 pages

Unmaking art history

chapter 8|10 pages

Rhetoric and motive in writing art history

A shapeshifter's perspective

part III|61 pages

Instituting art history

chapter 9|12 pages

On the institution of limits

chapter 10|16 pages

Remaking art history

Working wonder in the university's ruins

chapter 12|15 pages

Art, science, and evolution

part IV|61 pages

Old masters, new institutions

chapter 13|15 pages

Figuring the origins of the modern at the fin de siècle

The trope of the pathetic male

chapter 14|23 pages

Re-imagining meaning in the contemporary museum

From things that go beep in the case to the artist ex machina

chapter 15|19 pages

(Con)Testing resources