Anthropologies of Art

02 Based on the 2003 Clark Conference, this new volume in the highly successful series Clark Studies in the Visual Arts examines the intersections and divergences between art history and anthropology. How do these disciplines understand the term “art”? What sorts of questions do they ask of the work of art? Is it possible to find a cross-cultural definition of art, or are such definitions inevitably Western in their origins and concerns? What implications do the answers to these questions have for the collecting and display of Western and non-Western objects in art museums? Fourteen leading art historians and anthropologists discuss these and other questions.
Based on the 2003 Clark Conference, this new volume in the highly successful series Clark Studies in the Visual Arts examines the intersections and divergences between art history and anthropology. How do these disciplines understand the term “art”? What sorts of questions do they ask of the work of art? Is it possible to find a cross-cultural definition of art, or are such definitions inevitably Western in their origins and concerns? What implications do the answers to these questions have for the collecting and display of Western and non-Western objects in art museums? Fourteen leading art historians and anthropologists discuss these and other questions.