0323 How to Write a More Global, More Inclusive History of Art?

An Ancient Egyptian Sculpture and Its Six Lessons

  • Éric de Chassey (Author)

    Éric de Chassey is director of the French National Institute of Art History (INHA) and professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the École normale supérieure in Lyon, France. Between 2009 and 2015, he was Director of the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici. He has published extensively on the arts and visual culture from the 20th and 21st centuries as well as curated numerous exhibitions, in France and the rest of the world.

Identifiers (Article)

Abstract

Since its beginnings, art history has been torn between a tendency to remain inside local or national boundaries and a more transnational orientation; it has also veered between addressing only the creations of well-recognized white European male solitary artists and assessing the importance of female, anonymous, or collective creators of less highly prized objects-images. The long overdue process of writing art histories that are more global (less European-centered) and more inclusive (less focused on overprized masterpieces) is underway. For professional art historians, the multiplicity of narratives thus offered can be a blessing. For a more general public, though, as well as students and maybe even many professionals it still clashes with an implied master narrative that has been left barely untouched. The necessity for a new master narrative that meets the standards of contemporary scholarly research leads to pressing questions: How do we write it? Who will write it? Is it worth trying?

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Language
en
Keywords
art historiography, national art histories, Global Art History, master narrative