Smith (director of the Centre for the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Institutions, U. of Westminster, London) and Holly (director of the Research and Academic Program, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute) edit essays based on the 2007 Clark Conference focused on philosophical and practical questions about working with visual art, primarily arguing that research is a legitimate topic in its own right. International contributors from academia, publishing, and the arts industries provide essays in two broad topics of encounters and obsessions, and the world and the archive; particular studies include the researcher as collector of failed goods, archival obsessions and obsessive archives, research as obsession with the scent of history, and new words on cold cases. With its exceptional research and writing, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and practitioners in the various facets of arts research. Illustrated in black-and-white throughout. Distributed by Yale U. Press. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) With essays by Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal, Marc Gotlieb, Serge Guilbaut, Michael Ann Holly, Akira Mizuta Lippit, W. J. T. Mitchell, Joanne Morra, Sina Najafi, Alexander Nemerov, Celeste Olalquiaga, Alexander Potts, and Reva Wolf The discipline of art history is in a moment of self-consciousness, and art historians are increasingly more self-reflexive about their practices. In this volume, thirteen authors address both the philosophical and practical issues now facing those in the visual arts field by investigating the ever-pressing issue of research. Their essays explore the remarkable nature of art historians’ personal, political, aesthetic, creative, and emotive curiosity and the process of doing research in the archive, library, studio, gallery, museum, and beyond. As such, the book considers the pleasures and dangers of researchers’ obsessions and encounters with the incoherence, chaos, and wonder that lie at the heart of searching for the not-yet-known. The volume is based on the 2007 Clark Conference of the same name.
