Getty Foundation

Abstract: The power and vitality of any scholarly discipline rest on its abilities to forge connections—among people and ideas and across international boundaries. Recognizing that art history becomes a stronger and more robust discipline when scholars from around the world are able to connect— to cross borders in the pursuit of the productive exchange of ideas—the Getty Foundation launched its Connecting Art Histories initiative in 2009, increasing such opportunities for sustained intellectual conversation. The plural form histories in Connecting Art Histories is deliberate. The goal of the initiative is not an encyclopedic enterprise to expand Western art history to incorporate the art of the rest of the world, nor is it an effort to disseminate the practices of Western art history internationally. Instead, we recognize the historiographical and methodological diversity that informs the discipline as it is practiced around the world. Simply put, our goal is to foster dialogue across and about these differences, actively bringing into the conversation meaningful voices that have not always had the opportunity to participate. The Getty Foundation has long encouraged opportunities to widen the international debate and discussion about art history. For example, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Foundation developed an initiative to strengthen art historical scholarship in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Fellowships provided over a six-year period (1991–97) enabled more than 120 scholars from the region to conduct research outside their home countries, most for the first time. Simultaneously, the Foundation provided grants to leading art historical libraries to © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group