ABSTRACT
Although Mark Twain famously announced, "Comparison is the death of joy," art historians cannot do without it. Comparison underlies all accounts of art styles and "quality" and makes it possible to discuss artworks created in different times and places. This chapter talks about art historians as comparison makers, who inevitably teach, write, and conduct research at different spots in the world. When early Western scholars began to develop large developmental patterns for Chinese art, broad comparisons between East and West were necessarily their starting points. As the rigid division between Western and non-Western art is collapsing, there have appeared efforts to develop a new, three-dimensional structure for an art history program, in which "vertical" national art histories are connected into layered "horizontal" world art histories. Forging cross-regional ties without abandoning the established historiography of art, this structure may potentially reshape art-historical knowledge as well as institutions, including academic departments, research institutes, and museums.
