Transhistorical Art History

Today, museum visitors may regularly encounter Old Masters hung next to contemporary art, but art historical writing has been slower to engage transhistorical thinking. While transhistorical curation challenges the notion that an artwork must be understood as part of a linear chronology or solely as the cultural product of a unique historical context, scholarly writing remains tethered to the discipline's deep grounding in periodization. What does it mean to abandon the "period eye" and to think across and against chronology? This session invites scholarly experimentation with transhistorical approaches that go beyond anecdote or aside. What does it mean to think deeply about artworks together across time? What do transhistorical methods offer a discipline still largely defined by periods and movements? How might art history adapt to or encompass nonlinear concepts of temporality? Can transhistorical approaches recover perspectives silenced by histories of colonialism and enslavement? What are the ethics and the political stakes of such approaches? Do transhistorical methods change the goals and audiences of art historical writing? This session aims to include a variety of transhistorical approaches, beyond the pairing of historical and contemporary practice. Contributors are welcome to consider how transhistorical art history succeeds or fails in moving our discipline forward.