Always Connect? Relational Paradigms in Art History

Art history draws on a host of relational paradigms, from ecologies and networks to systems and webs, to frame its analyses of artistic production, circulation, and reception. Recent studies illuminate, for instance, how artworks have been embedded in systems of colonial oppression, are implicated in ecologies of environmental exploitation, and move through global logistical networks. Far less attention has been paid to the implications of selecting one relational paradigm over another, even though that choice is decisive. Each paradigm carries its own presumptions and priorities and so privileges certain perspectives over others. This panel therefore asks: What is at stake in the ways that relations are posed and understood in art history? How do those paradigms define methods of inquiry and inform examinations of artworks? Which histories are invoked, explicitly or implicitly, in the choice of one over another? And under what conditions do attempts to connect encounter frictions and misalignments?

The session will comprise four 20-minute papers and a panel discussion to reassess the relational metaphors and models at the core of art history. As the panel seeks a diverse range of positions, conceptually and geographically, papers may offer methodological reflections, theoretical interventions, or historiographic reappraisals as well as focused analyses of artworks. Of particular interest are papers that offer relational frameworks developed outside canonical European and North American contexts.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Christopher Williams-Wynn, Freie Universität Berlin, chrislww@zedat.fu-berlin.de