The "global turn" as a disciplinary future for art history

Abstract

Discussions about the "global turn" in Art History are gaining more and more space. Since the end of the last century, art historians have turned their procedures and methods towards deepening the connections, exchanges, interdependencies, mobility and visual cultures shared between geographically diverse groups. The researches carried out in this context opened new paths for materialities, works and objects little studied or known. It is increasingly necessary to encourage research that connects the various regions and cultural forms. How can the insights of regional and local studies be integrated into an inclusive international network of scholarly activity? We invite creative theoretical proposals and strategic case studies from all fields, places, and times to envision a future for global art history by focusing on connectivities, negotiated cultural differences, and dynamic historical processes.  Such a disciplinary future resists the logic of economic globalization, avoids the national framing of its objects of investigation, eschews hierarchies of genre, rejects ahistorical presentism, and puts into question unexamined claims to universality.