78. Reconstituting the Histories of Modern Art: Exhibitions, Infrastructure, and Historiography

Recent exhibitions have fundamentally reshaped how modern art is written and understood. Major retrospectives devoted to artists such as Kim Lim, Pacita Abad, and Li Yuan-chia, alongside exhibitions including Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction and Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art, have expanded the artists, media, and geographies that constitute histories of modern art. Yet these exhibitions do more than broaden the canon. They make visible the ongoing historiographic reassessment of the frameworks through which modern art is researched, exhibited, interpreted, and written.

Building upon recent scholarship that has expanded the histories of modern art through global and transnational perspectives, this session shifts attention to the exhibitions, catalogues, and curatorial methodologies through which those revised histories are synthesized, debated, and disseminated. Rather than centring recovery or inclusion as endpoints, it considers exhibitions as active participants in the production of art-historical knowledge and the ongoing reconstitution of the discipline’s understanding of modern art. Contemporary exhibitions, together with their catalogues and related scholarship, have become sites where art-historical knowledge is brought into public view. In doing so, they become the starting point for new research, critical debate, and future exhibitions, shaping disciplinary discourse and broader cultural understandings of modern art.

We welcome focused case studies that examine exhibitions as sites of historiographic production. Contributions might address retrospectives, thematic surveys, museum collections, exhibition histories, artist estates, or related curatorial research, exploring how these practices reshape historical visibility and contribute to the ongoing reconstitution of the histories of modern art.

Themes: Modern art, Historiography, Curatorial practice

Additional format comment: This session will follow the traditional format of 20 minute papers followed by 5 minute Q & A.

Lead Convenor: Jessica Denise Braum, Temple University, Department of Art History, United States

To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on our website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.