Abstract

Storytellers of Art Histories: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life

Editors: Alpesh Kantilal Patel & Yasmeen Siddiqui

We invoke “art history” in the title given its ongoing usage in pedagogy but at the same time in its broadest sense. Since at least the 1980s, there has been a deluge of art historical knowledge in the art world being produced in academia and in the curatorial and education departments of museums and non-profit spaces. However, there has been little synthesis of the wide-ranging material being produced--perhaps because of an aversion to creating canons. This anthology focuses on how the discipline of art history can no longer be confined to the rarified world of academia. It brings together first-person narratives not only of art historians but also curators, artists, educators, and archivists--who are based in various countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas and Australia. The book argues that all of these kinds of practitioners already impact the construction of art’s histories but there has been no serious reflection to date on how their work comes together productively to write and teach art history. Of special interest is animating the sometimes-vexed relationship between the fairly new field of curatorial studies and the much older field of art history. 

Storytellers of Art’s Histories is distinguished by its effort to transparently perform the mechanics of storytelling as animated in art history. Our commitment to an inter-generational, non-hierarchical approach among the five knowledge-producers (art historian, curator, artist, educator and archivist) that organize the book aims to upend the field’s caste system and open the field up for exploration by a broader base of future practitioners than is usually understood and accepted as possible among undergraduate students looking for fruitful areas of study and work.

• Marsha Meskimmon introduced by Marie G Latham;

• Nana Andusei-Poku introduced by Emma Holter;

• Regine Basha introduced by Rachel Vorsanger;

• Miranda Lash introduced by Mayret Rubenstein;

• Amalia Mesa-Baines introduced by Marisa Marte;

• Lucy Lippard introduced by Rachael Reynolds;

• Gloria Sutton introduced by Camila Damico Medina; and

• Chitra Ganesh introduced by Emma Krall.