Art History and Its Institutions focuses on the institutional discourses that shaped and continue to shape the field from its foundation in the nineteenth century.

What is art history? The answer depends on who asks the question. Artists, museum professionals, academics, art critics, collectors and connoisseurs, dealers and auctioneers all share in the goals, achievements, methods and history of art history. Tied to and sustained by a host of competing institutions, art history remains a many-headed field of study. Art History and Its Institutions focuses on the institutional discourses that shaped and continue to shape the field from its foundation in the nineteenth century. From museums and universities to law courts, labour organisations and photography studios, contributors examine a range of institutions considering their impact on movements such as modernism, their role in conveying or denying legitimacy, and their impact of defining the parameters of the discipline. Frederic N. Bohrer, Kathryn Brush, David Carrier, Claire Farago, Ivan Gaskell, Marc Gottlieb, Helen Rees Leahy, Elizabeth Mansfield, Andrew McClellan, Maureen Meister, Mary G. Morton, Steven Nelson, D

Part 1 Putting art history in its place: art history and modernism, Elizabeth Mansfield
hearing the unsaid - art history, museology, and the composition of the self, Donald Preziosi
from Boullee to Bilbao - the museum as Utopian space, Andrew McClellan
Marburg, Harvard and purpose-built architecture for art history, Kathryn Bush
Viollet-le-Duc and Taine
at the Ecole des Beaux Arts - on the first professorship of
art history in France, Philip Hotchkiss Walsh
colonizing culture - the origins of art history in Australia, Jacqueline
Strecker. Part 2 Instituting a canon - placing the centre and margins of art history: deep innovation and mere eccentricity - six case studies of innovation in art history, David Carrier
the taste of angels in the art of darkness - fashioning the canon of African art, Christopher B. Steiner
tradesmen as scholars - interdependencies in the study and exchange of art, Ivan Gaskell
how canons disappear - the case of Henri Regnault Marc Gottlieb
using art history - the Louvre
and its public persona, 1848-52, Gabriel Weisberg
silent movies - on excluding the ethnographic subject from the discourse of art, Claire Farago
art history on the academic fringe - Taine's philosophy of art, Mary Morton. Part 3 The practice of art history - discourse and method as institution
"for connoisseurs" - the Burlington Magazine, 1903-1911, Helen Rees Leahy
photographic perspectives - photography and the institutional formation of art history, Frederick N. Bohrer
instituting genius - the formation of biographical art history in France, Greg M. Thomas
a preponderance of practical problems - the history of art in the United States between
1886 and 1888, Eric Rosenberg
emancipation and the freed in American sculpture - race, representation and the beginnings of African-American art history, Steven Nelson