The State of Art History: Contemporary Art

Contemporary art became prominent in public media, markets and museums, and art-world discourse during the 1990s, eclipsing most previous art. Since then, it has become a burgeoning art historical research field, yet its academic status remains ambiguous, its position in relation to art criticism is contradictory, and its goals and procedures are radically undertheorized. Nonetheless, the concept of the contemporary offers as rich a resource for understanding art within contemporaneity as did the concept of the modern for art within modernity, as revealed by this survey of the concept's emergence, history, and current status in art historical discourse.