6 Imagining art history otherwise (original) (raw)

2017, Global and World Art in the Practice of the University Museum, 115-130. Ed. Jane Chin Davidson and Sandra Esslinger

When it comes to broadening art history's object domain, the Fowler Museum anticipated the global turn in art history by at least two decades. In the 1970s, both the University of California, Los Angeles's anthropology museum and its art history program distinguished themselves by their exhibition and hiring practices that moved away from a European-centered focus. As early as the mid-1970s, UCLA Professor of African Art Arnold Rubin described the art history program as offering "a balanced presentation of world art at all levels of the curriculum, correcting the Western bias prevalent in most programs." 1 UCLA's programmatic commitment was a formative influence on my own studies when it came to my attention in the late 1980s as I was looking for a second book project, my first independent project after my dissertation. The following remarks are addressed to two urgent questions facing the humanities today in the corporate university climate of accountability, marketing, and downsizing. The vulnerability of the humanities in general is especially relevant to art history, cultural anthropology, and museology in these two respects: the pressing need to educate students to succeed in today's job market and the pressing need to rethink how we teach at the introductory level. The increasingly corporate university's administrative charge to offer majors that have occupational value is not one we can afford to ignore. But it does not mean that we should fit the humanities into a vocational discourse that treats the acquisition of knowledge as a matter of imparting information. The open question is how to direct our considerable intellectual resources to produce graduates whose credentials fit both current intellectual needs and the jobs that are on offer. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, art history has very good reason for being taught and that reason is the museum and related institutions and practices, chiefly the infotainment industry. 2 What matters crucially are the values that we instill along with the subject matter. It may sound easy, but it actually takes a lot of effort to identify the values that get dragged along with the subject matter. How does that happen? A good example to start thinking about the problem is the subdisciplinary categories into which our histories of art are Taylor and Francis 1980s as I was looking for a second book project, my first independent 1980s as I was looking for a second book project, my first independent project after my dissertation. project after my dissertation. following remarks are addressed to two urgent questions following remarks are addressed to two urgent questions