ABSTRACT

Contemporary art practices are global, most observers agree. Helen Gardner was more than prepared to meet this challenge, as her formative educational experiences were a close encounter with both the elite and the popular practices of art history. Early offerings in art history at Chicago drew on faculty whose primary appointments were with other departments, notably archeology and the Semitic languages and literature. They also included courses on "modern", that is, Renaissance and after, and American art taught by an artist, George B. Zug, a graduate of the university. Art has become segregated from the affairs of life as something to be treated with indifference, or disregarded, or as a luxury, something to be indulged in, upon occasions, or as a means of ostentation. It is the age of the museum and the exhibition - both unnatural. Crosby and his colleagues reworked Gardner's diagrammatic impulse as well, replacing her empathetic tactility with an iconic visuality.