The Map of Art History

This essay examines how art history, like other disciplines and societies, defines itself through order and classification. From many possibilities, it considers three examples: a listing of fields of art history, a library system for classifying art books, and the plotting of space and time in art history survey texts. Central to the discussion is the geography of art history. How and why do disciplinary classifications that aspire to be global remain local? What are the consequences of our continued use of mappings that have their origins and bases in geopolitical spaces that no longer exist?