The Two Art Histories; The Museum and the University

by Edited by Charles W. Haxthausen; With essays by Dawn Ades, Andreas Beyer, Richar

• ISBN13: 9780300097757
• ISBN10: 0300097751
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2003-01-11
• Publisher: Clark Art Institute

Summary

Many museum professionals today believe that university-based art history focuses too much on theory and the social agency of art, neglecting the aesthetic dimensions of the art object. Conversely, many academics feel that museums have become preoccupied with the quest for money and audiences, making them an increasingly unlikely source of innovative scholarship. In this provocative book, seventeen eminent figures from both sides of the art world--museum professionals and university scholars--explore the questions underlying the often tense relationship between the two main branches of the discipline.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Michael Conforti
Introduction	ix
Charles W. Haxthausen
Part One: The Two Art Histories: Perspectives
Whose Art History? Curators, Academics, and the Museum Visitor in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s	3	(11)
Stephen Deuchar
Magnanimity and Paranoia in the Big Bad Art World	14	(11)
Ivan Gaskell
Between Academic and Exhibition Practice: The Case of Renaissance Studies	25	(7)
Andreas Beyer
Constructing Histories of Latin American Art	32	(13)
Dawn Ades
Art History and Its Audience: A Matter of Gaps and Bridges	45	(7)
Sybille Ebert-Schifferer
www.display: Complicating the Formats of Art History	52	(11)
Barbara Maria Stafford
Part Two: The Exhibition as Discursive Medium
Eloquent Walls and Argumentative Spaces: Displaying Late Works of Degas	63	(11)
Richard Kendall
Telling Stories Museum Style	74	(7)
Mark Rosenthal
Repetition and Novelty: Exhibitions Tell Tales	81	(6)
Patricia Mainardi
German Art---National Expression or World Language? Two Visual Essays	87	(15)
Eckhart Gillen
A Case for Active Viewing	102	(13)
William H. Truettner
Part Three: Impressionism: The Blockbuster and Revisionist Scholarship
Murder, Autopsy, or Dissection? Art History Divides Artists into Parts: The Cases of Edgar Degas and Claude Monet	115	(8)
Richard R. Brettell
A History of Absence Belatedly Addressed: Impressionism with and without Mary Cassatt	123	(19)
Griselda Pollock
The Blockbuster, Art History, and the Public: The Case of Origins of Impressionism	142	(12)
Gary Tinterow
Possibilities for a Revisionist Blockbuster: Landscapes/Impressions of France	154	(8)
John House
A Tormented Friendship: French Impressionism in Germany	162	(21)
Michael F. Zimmermann
Afterword	183	(10)
Richard Brilliant
Contributors	193