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From nations to networks : an analysis of North American world art historical discourse during the transcultural turn, and the rise of the museum as agent

University of British Columbia

This dissertation offers an analysis of the emergent English-language discourse of World Art History in North America during the transcultural turn in art history. It inquiries into what World Art History is by examining how the proposal for World Art History is impacting twenty-first century North American art historical theory and scholarship, and assesses the relevance of World Art Historical discourse for scholars of global contemporary art. With a targeted focus on the museum as a site leading in the development of World Art Historical research principles—including an original Canadian case study examining the National Gallery of Canada’s biennial exhibition series—it also assesses whether, and to what degree, a turn to World Art History effectively responds to the criticism of persistent Eurocentrism in the discipline. I argue that World Art History encompasses a series of moves that elasticize and often collapse the political borders, cultural boundaries, and racializations that have long bound together the European nation-state as the (artificial) construct upon which Western art history as a discipline—and the project of Western self-hood itself—is built. Further, I argue that in its challenge to the nation-state, World Art History questions not only the discipline’s ideological roots but also its signature methodologies and theoretical frameworks to reimagine the current Western-facing disciplinary frame in ways that re-orient and widen it according to a new global perspective. While many critics view these widening moves as creating an epistemological break with the discipline of art history and as presenting a serious and substantial threat, I argue that World Art History can be reconciled with the discipline. World Art History, currently a set of research principles corresponding with notions of networks of connection and exchange, signals a paradigm shift within the discipline of art history: by shifting parts of the discipline away from national histories and area studies towards modes that foreground connection and exchange, World Art History frames new types of inquiries around the historical reality of the interconnectedness of art and its history, and establishes the fundamental basis for evaluating research findings generated from these newly-mapped and now visible connections.

Text

2020-01-27

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/73391

Interdisciplinary Studies

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/