Art history and modernism

Art history’s unusual status complicates its institutional history. The institutions most often associated with art history’s professionalization are the museum and the academy. Indeed, one could convincingly argue that the vocational history of art history begins with Jean-Dominique Vivant Denon’s appointment as director of the Musée Napoléon in 1803 or Gustav Waagen’s 1844 installation as professor of art history at the University of Berlin. As the most prominent and plentiful employers of professional art historians in the nineteenth century as today, the museum and the academy enjoy a justifiably high profile in histories of the discipline. They are not, however, the only institutions to guide art history’s disciplinary formation. A much broader institutional history informs the field.