The Getty Research Institute (GRI) has a long-standing history of acquiring artist archives for its Special Collections, including the archives of prominent early twentieth-century artists such as ...

Over the past decade, both the document and the archive have functioned as central sites of study for contemporary artists, as well as contemporary curators. Key theoretical texts date back to the ...

Over the course of the twentieth century, various political regimes in Europe used medieval images to demonstrate and legitimize their power. The present study takes as its focus the case of Portugal and, more precisely, an illumination in the twelfth-century Portuguese manuscript known as the Lorvão Beatus, a copy of the Commentary on the Apocalypse written in northern Spain in the eighth century and attributed to the monk Beatus of Liébana (c. 730–800). This manuscript's depiction of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was frequently utilized during the first decades of the Estado Novo (New State), a dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974. The Estado Novo was headed by António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) until 1968, when Salazar retired due to ill health and was replaced by Marcelo Caetano (1906–1980), who ruled until 1974, the year of the Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) which returned democracy to Portugal. The Estado Novo developed the so-called Política do Espírito (Politics of the Spirit), a cultural policy that attempted to reinvent Portuguese national identity in order to advance its own ideology. In conjunction with this effort, the artists who worked with the Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (Department of National Propaganda) appropriated the depiction of the Four Horsemen in the Lorvão Beatus – either adopting it as a direct model or more loosely alluding to it – as a symbol of Portuguese identity. The example of the Lorvão Horsemen reveals how the Estado Novo used medieval images for propagandistic purposes, to help legitimize their rule and to assert their own place in Portuguese history.

In the early twentieth century, British architects increasingly turned away from the Gothic Revival towards new forms of architectural expression. However, in many key contexts and projects this style continued to evolve. Two architects, John Ninian Comper (1864–1960) and Temple Lushington Moore (1856–1920), were especially invested in medievalism and, more broadly, in the richness of architectural revivalism. Both worked in different ways within this set of practices in order to demonstrate revivalism's wide appeal for modern culture, and for sacred spaces in particular. This article compares two Church of England chapels that have received very little art historical attention, but which are linked in a series of ways. Moore's chapel for Pusey House in Oxford was completed in 1914, with additions by Comper in the 1930s. The chapel for the Anglican convent at London Colney in Hertfordshire, established by All Saints Sisters of the Poor, was designed by Comper in the 1920s and extended by his son Sebastian Comper in the 1960s. In both cases, historicism and revivalism in architecture and design heralded not a conservative return to previous generations' experiences of religion and of Anglicanism in particular, but a new way forward in liturgical ritual, social cohesion, and multisensory experiences of the sacred. In both cases, I argue, the connection between the visual cultural legacies of High Anglicanism following the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century, and the unique characteristics of small-scale intimate worship in the all-male context of Pusey House and all-female context of London Colney, created new and intensive zones for revivalist monasticism that were as medievalist as they were modern.

In an article in The Burlington Magazine of 1933, British theorist Herbert Read (1893–1968) proposed “a basic linear signature of our race.” His invocation of line as a mark of identity is representative of a wider community of thinkers who linked the British avant-garde with medieval illumination via the watercolors of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Theorists and scholars such as Kenneth Clark (1903–1983), William George Constable (1887–1976), and Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) joined Read in identifying drawing as an essential aspect of medieval illumination that had re-emerged in the compositions of the Romantic period as well as those of the Neo-Romantics, including John Piper (1903–1992) and Paul Nash (1889–1946). Theoretical enthusiasm for this lineage arose not only from aesthetic affinities but also from political utility. Amid concerns over mounting political extremism, notions of medieval art were useful as emblems of British precedent for sustainable and proud work. This paper traces the use of line at the time, most notably by Read, as a symbolic mark that promoted a balance between individualism and collectivism through its connection to the medieval period. Furthermore, I argue that harnessing the moral connotations of line was possible, and particularly effective, because of culturally available understandings of the drawn line's distinctive intimacy.

Art historians have theorized that a world art history would involve a reconsideration of the art historical canon. Although specialists have been added to programs and course offerings have become increasingly diverse, our discipline has yet to grapple with the pedagogical implications of building a world art history from the ground up. Through an analysis of art history programs at 91 institutions, this article investigates when and how local histories of art are introduced and integrated into the art history curriculum with the aim of exposing the disciplinary imbalances that currently hinder the study of world art. As an intervention into an ongoing theoretical debate, this study explores the pedagogical implications of a world art history and demonstrates that a global foundation at the entry level, though currently lacking at most institutions, is a vital step toward advancing the study of world art in the United States.

This article is focused on the historical development of the classification system of the Photothek of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz (KHI) between the time of its establishment in 1897, with the typological-stylistic arrangement mainly by artists and locations, and the systematization of the subject cross-reference index (card catalog) in the 1920s to1930s. Specifically, these two incisive reorganizations of the Photothek were linked, on the one hand, to relocations and related extensions of space for the growing collection of books and images, and, on the other, to the scholars with their different research interests. The evolution of the categories that determined the thematic ordering of the images and their spatial configuration in open shelves for researchers, as well as the practical use of the typological-stylistic arrangement, shows the Photothek as an eloquent testimony of the constant variations in art history theories and methodologies.

The future of art history has much to offer and much at stake. Recent references to the discipline in popular media have encouraged a critical assessment of the so-called humanities crisis, revealing it to be a red herring for the more systemic ailments that afflict higher education. Art history has a role to play in changing the conversation about the arts and humanities in society as a whole. In an effort to spur this change, this essay describes and contextualizes Art History That, a crowd-sourced manifesto for the future of the discipline. Inspired by Claes Oldenburg's 1961 statement “I Am for an Art … ,” Art History That is both a playful literary experiment and an earnest effort to advocate for art history and its future.

In February 2014, eighty participants gathered at Columbia College, in downtown Chicago, in the two days leading up to the annual College Art Association (CAA) conference. This gathering was the second THATCamp to take place in conjunction with CAA's annual conference (the first occurred at CAA 2013 in New York City). THATCamp, which stands for The Humanities and Technology Camp, is an “unconference” that is managed nationally by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), George Mason University, in Fairfax, Virginia. Current THATCamp coordinator at the RRCHNM, Amanda French, participated in THATCamp CAA and helped to lead introductions and scheduling over the two-day event. The organizers of THATCamp CAA 2014 were Anne Swartz, Savannah College of Art and Design, and Michelle Millar Fisher, CUNY Graduate Center. The advisory committee consisted of Suzanne Preston Blier, Harvard University; Pamela Fletcher, Bowdoin College; Hussein Keshani, The University of British Columbia, Okanagan; Elizabeth Neely, Art Institute of Chicago; and Christine L. Sundt, Visual Resources. The topics and themes raised by the participants included publishing, teaching, research, archival practices, and knowledge dissemination, which demonstrated the fundamental interrelationship between the concerns of a “digital” audience and those of the “traditional” conference. The title of this paper indicates reflection on the event preparations and proceedings, an open-ended question to our peers, and a provocation based on the outcomes of THATCamp CAA 2014.