breaking The silence: methods of writing art history

Edited by Caroline Fowler

With essays by Mieke Bal, Stephen Bann, Dore Bowen, David Carrier, Mark Cheetham, Elena Ciletti, Mary-Dailey Desmarais, Hanneke Grootenboer, Christopher P. Heuer, Elliot Krasnopoler, Alexander Nemerov, Glenn Peers, James Pilgrim, Mary Roberts, Michael Roth, Nathan Stobaugh, Kari Weil, Janet Wolff and Oliver Wunsch

$29.95 Softcover

A collection of essays that think with, against, and beside the intellectual questions that have engaged Michael Ann Holly throughout her storied career
 
American scholar Michael Ann Holly (b. 1944) has devoted a decades-long career to the historiography and theory of art history. Some of the ideas with which she has grappled include the impossible material presence and experience of loss that drives the discipline of art history; the role of writing in art history and the never-ceasing tension language and objects; and melancholy, loss, and historical inquiry. For this exciting volume, more than a dozen of the top art historians working today were invited to think creatively about writing art history while engaging in intellectual conversation with Holly. The book’s essays offer new and unsettling questions rather than tacitly reproducing canonized knowledge.

Caroline Fowler is the Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute and teaches in the graduate program in the history of art at Williams College, Williamstown, MA. 

292 Pages

120 color illus.

2025

Published by the Clark Art Institute and distributed by Yale University Press

ISBN 9780300282276 (softcover)