Image/Sound/Text:
Interview with Professor Donald Preziosi - 8 July 2010
With Andrew Dewdney, David Dibosa, Victoria Walsh
Biography of Donald Preziosi
Donald Preziosi, Professor of Art History, received his PhD from Harvard and before joining the UCLA faculty taught art and architectural history and contemporary critical theory at SUNY, MIT, and Yale. At UCLA he developed the art history critical theory program as well as the UCLA museum studies program. His publications include Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (1989), The Art of Art History (1998), and Aegean Art and Architecture (1999). In 2000-2001 he was the Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford, where he delivered the annual Slade Lectures on the current state of art history, museology, and visual culture studies, published the following year. (Brain of the Earth's Body, Minnesota, 2002). His research, teaching, and writing link together cultural studies, intellectual history, critical theory, and the arts and museologies of various ancient and modern societies.
Outline questions sent in advance:
In your book, Brain of the Earth’s Body, you discuss your relationship with your father, can you say a bit more about your upbringing and its impact on your intellectual formation?
You have been part of the development of the discipline of Art History for many years now. What, in your view, have been the most significant changes in the discipline? How have they arisen?
You have characterized a relation between art history and museology. What do you see as the clearest implications of that relation?
Some say that your work has formed a segue from art history/museology into visual cultures. Such a move has detractors on both sides. How convinced are you of the importance of such a move? Do you have any doubts about it?
We have witnessed big changes in Museums in Britain over the past decade, particularly in respect of different approaches to audiences. How far have you witnessed parallel developments in the USA?
Some of the changes n Britain can be seen as a result of ‘small p’ political change in the cultural sector. North America has also witnessed it fair share of political advocacy over cultural representation (First Nations peoples, African Americans, etc) What has been the overall effect of such advocacy?
One key issue that came to our attention is the way in which Museums have been encouraged to give an account of the diversity of their audiences. Such approaches are increasingly contested here. How do you view this ‘call to account’?