Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science

I was "anonymous" ... Robert Summers: "In a word: Brilliant. In a sentence: This book has changed (and continues to change) the trajectory and velocity of "art history". Without a doubt, the ideas that are explored, the questions that are raised, and the arguments that are made in this vastly important text MUST be reckoned with if art history is to mean and/or do anything in the present and the future -- as opposed to remaining on the track(s) it is currently on, which is like a Mobius strip in which "we" find ourselves in the same old places (indeed, "one place after another" that is in no way "new" or "other than"), and that are (repetitive) conservative ideas and ideologies. In my professional opinion, anyone who works in and/or around "art history" and its corollaries (e.g., art criticism, museology, and "visual culture") will do well by engaging with this important work (of art [techne]-in its own right). Now, whether you agree or disagree-or both, simultaneously-with "Preziosi," engaging, being-with, reckoning with what he brings up and which is contained-and not "contained" by-in this rich text will, I believe, bring a productive and fresh dialogue to this discipline we have been calling "art history" for over 200+ years (pace JJ Winckelmann). I know this text has been published for over 10+ years, but I believe "we" must return to many of the ideas that are/were explored, the questions that are/were raised, and the arguments that are/were made in this timely/un-timely text, Rethinking Art History. It would also do the reader well to read "Preziosi's" recently published text The Brain of the Earth's Body, which were a series of papers, works-in-progress, notes, delivered as the 2001 Slade Lectures in Fine Arts at Oxford University. As a brief comparison, just as the work of Judith Butler is to women's studies and queer studies and theory, and Peggy Pheland is to performance studies, the work of Donald Preziosi is to art history (and museology) and the radical (as to the "root") re-thinking of a discipline many of us have dedicated our (academic, personal/public, and political) lives to re-thinking and re-formatting."